Introducing AI: Structural dynamics in organizations managing a General Purpose Technology

Organizations looking to employ a General Purpose Technology such as Artificial Intelligence face the challenge of managing the process of search for suitable internal structures. This search is complicated by uncertainty surrounding the new technology, which sparks power struggles and requires the organization to balance broad exploration for applications, the ramp-up of expertise, and employee engagement against transparency and control. This paper presents a qualitative analysis, with observations from three case organizations moving through their AI journey, resulting in a 4-stage model of GPT introduction. The key finding is that, even though emerging from diverse starting points, all organizations pass through similar movements of centralization and decentralization, eventually working towards broad diffusion within the organizations. This contributes to the discussion around the management of GPTs, where a previous focus was on central control, and integrates previous research on innovative search and AI management.     «

Organizations looking to employ a General Purpose Technology such as Artificial Intelligence face the challenge of managing the process of search for suitable internal structures. This search is complicated by uncertainty surrounding the new technology, which sparks power struggles and requires the organization to balance broad exploration for applications, the ramp-up of expertise, and employee engagement against transparency and control. This paper presents a qualitative analysis, with observa...     »