What Do I Do in a World of Artificial Intelligence? Investigating the Impact of Substitutive Decision-Making AI Systems on Employees' Professional Role Identity

“Studies focusing on the collective level examine how professionals develop their role identity in relationship to others and to their work (Pouthier et al., 2013; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991).”

“Using an in-depth case study allows us to shed light on novel phenomena (Eisenhardt, 1989), enabling observation and an understanding of underlying mechanisms and relationships at the individual level (Eisenhardt, 1989; Gioia et al., 2013).”

“Using an in-depth case study allows us to shed light on novel phenomena (Eisenhardt, 1989), enabling observation and an understanding of underlying mechanisms and relationships at the individual level (Eisenhardt, 1989; Gioia et al., 2013).”

“Studies focusing on the collective level examine how professionals develop their role identity in relationship to others and to their work (Pouthier et al., 2013; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991).”

“Thus, professionals not only define themselves in association with their own work but also in relation to the work of others (Abbott, 1988; Becker et al., 1961; Freidson, 2001; Reay et al., 2017).”

“Such AI systems are able to evaluate new information and use their learning abilities to adapt their decisions and adjust their behavior (Agrawal et al., 2017; Anderson et al., 2018; Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2017; Burrell, 2016; Manyika et al., 2017; Raisch & Krakowski, in press).”

“Studies focusing on the individual level examine how, over time, individual employees develop their own identity through education, training, and experience (Ibarra, 1999; Pratt et al., 2006).”

“Thus, professionals not only define themselves in association with their own work but also in relation to the work of others (Abbott, 1988; Becker et al., 1961; Freidson, 2001; Reay et al., 2017).”

“Existing literature on information systems (IS) and identity centers, first, on identities tied to material objects (Carter et al., 2020a, 2020b; Carter & Grover, 2015) and, second, on identities tied to work roles and social groups (Chreim et al., 2007; Nelson & Irwin, 2014; Pratt et al., 2006).”

“However, other studies have shown that introducing a new IS can also threaten professionals’ identity (Craig et al., 2019; Kim & Kankanhalli, 2009; Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Marakas & Hornik, 1996).”

“First, unlike previous IS, AI systems are capable of autonomously taking over entire work processes rather than substituting for specific tasks (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018; Bailey et al., 2019; Stone et al., 2016; von Krogh, 2018).”

“However, other studies have shown that introducing a new IS can also threaten professionals’ identity (Craig et al., 2019; Kim & Kankanhalli, 2009; Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Marakas & Hornik, 1996).”

“The increasing introduction and use of IS challenges professionals’ role identity by fundamentally altering professionals’ work processes (Brynjolfsson & Mitchell, 2017; Faraj et al., 2018; Manyika et al., 2017).”

“Specifically, the contrast between oneself others in similar settings shapes one’s professional role identity (Chreim et al., 2007; Sluss & Ashforth, 2007; Vough et al., 2013).”

“Therefore, introducing an AI system changes the way in which consultants do their work and how they perceive themselves as professionals, consequently affecting their professional role identity (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018; Faraj et al., 2018; Manyika et al., 2017).”

“Although automating tasks has long been a major topic in IS research (Rai et al., 2019; Zuboff, 1988), AI systems have unique characteristics that go beyond automation.”

“Thus, professionals not only define themselves in association with their own work but also in relation to the work of others (Abbott, 1988; Becker et al., 1961; Freidson, 2001; Reay et al., 2017).”

“If they feel that their identity is threatened, they often respond by rejecting mechanisms, making it difficult for organizations to promote change (Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Petriglieri, 2011).”

“Institutions are increasingly introducing AI systems in the workplace (Brynjolfsson & Mitchell, 2017; von Krogh, 2018).”

“The banking industry was among the first to introduce AI systems offering fully automated decision-making (Bahrammirzaee, 2010), which makes this industry particularly suitable for a case study.”

“AI systems, in contrast, are often fully nontransparent to users (Dourish, 2016; Faraj et al., 2018).”

“Existing literature on information systems (IS) and identity centers, first, on identities tied to material objects (Carter et al., 2020a, 2020b; Carter & Grover, 2015) and, second, on identities tied to work roles and social groups (Chreim et al., 2007; Nelson & Irwin, 2014; Pratt et al., 2006).”

“Although automating tasks has long been a major topic in IS research (Rai et al., 2019; Zuboff, 1988), AI systems have unique characteristics that go beyond automation.”

“However, other studies have shown that introducing a new IS can also threaten professionals’ identity (Craig et al., 2019; Kim & Kankanhalli, 2009; Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Marakas & Hornik, 1996).”

“Second, substitutive decision-making AI systems offer employees no possibility of interacting with the system (Lindenbaum et al., 2020).”

“Skilled and experienced employees could be used to supervise and train new employees who lack appropriate long-term experience (Beane, 2019).”

“…how a single profession’s role identity changes following the introduction of an IS (e.g., physicians’ altered professional role identity, as in Reay et al., 2017), or how IS affect multiple professions, with one profession perceiving the IS as a threat and another profession perceiving it…”

“Studies that focus on the positive effect of IS on employees’ identity highlight, in particular, how IS can enhance professionals’ role identity (e.g., Kyratsis et al., 2017; Nelson & Irwin, 2014).”

“The literature covering work roles and social groups shows how employees seek to maintain their professional role identity when confronted with a newly introduced technology by adapting or restructuring themselves or their work processes (Craig et al., 2019; Mishra et al., 2012; Petriglieri, 2011).”

“Studies that focus on the positive effect of IS on employees’ identity highlight, in particular, how IS can enhance professionals’ role identity (e.g., Kyratsis et al., 2017; Nelson & Irwin, 2014).”

“Such AI systems are able to evaluate new information and use their learning abilities to adapt their decisions and adjust their behavior (Agrawal et al., 2017; Anderson et al., 2018; Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2017; Burrell, 2016; Manyika et al., 2017; Raisch & Krakowski, in press).”

“Existing literature on information systems (IS) and identity centers, first, on identities tied to material objects (Carter et al., 2020a, 2020b; Carter & Grover, 2015) and, second, on identities tied to work roles and social groups (Chreim et al., 2007; Nelson & Irwin, 2014; Pratt et al., 2006).”

“However, in many cases, AI systems are nontransparent and employees often perceive them as inexplicable (Anderson et al., 2018; Dourish, 2016; Faraj et al., 2018).”

“…identity, as in Reay et al., 2017), or how IS affect multiple professions, with one profession perceiving the IS as a threat and another profession perceiving it as an enhancement (e.g., Craig et al., 2019; Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Marakas & Hornik, 1996; Mishra et al., 2012; Nach & Lejeune, 2010).”

“AI systems not only substitute parts of employees’ work processes, but many can also replace defining core activities that constitute the profession itself (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018; Anderson et al., 2018; Bughin et al., 2018; Harari, 2017).”

“Specifically, the contrast between oneself others in similar settings shapes one’s professional role identity (Chreim et al., 2007; Sluss & Ashforth, 2007; Vough et al., 2013).”

“First, unlike previous IS, AI systems are capable of autonomously taking over entire work processes rather than substituting for specific tasks (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018; Bailey et al., 2019; Stone et al., 2016; von Krogh, 2018).”

“…become strongly attached to their work through lengthy educational and socialization processes that enable them to define themselves with respect to the goals, values, norms, and interaction patterns associated with their work (Pratt et al., 2006; Reay et al., 2017; Stein et al., 2013).”

“They experienced (1) increasing competition from new market participants because of digitization, (2) a mismatch in their own personnel resources, (3) high loan default rates, and hence (4) declining profitability (Mayer et al., 2020).”

“Existing literature on information systems (IS) and identity centers, first, on identities tied to material objects (Carter et al., 2020a, 2020b; Carter & Grover, 2015) and, second, on identities tied to work roles and social groups (Chreim et al., 2007; Nelson & Irwin, 2014; Pratt et al., 2006).”

“…identity, as in Reay et al., 2017), or how IS affect multiple professions, with one profession perceiving the IS as a threat and another profession perceiving it as an enhancement (e.g., Craig et al., 2019; Lapointe & Rivard, 2005; Marakas & Hornik, 1996; Mishra et al., 2012; Nach & Lejeune, 2010).”

“Studies focusing on the collective level examine how professionals develop their role identity in relationship to others and to their work (Pouthier et al., 2013; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991).”

“For instance, Nach (2015) found that doctors and nurses perceived their identities to be threatened when they were forced to deal with a newly implemented electronic health records system.”

“One of the main worries of the public about AI and the future of work is increasing AI substitution for employees ’ tasks, responsibilities, and decision making and the high potential for worker replacement (Ernst et al., 2019; Strich et al., 2021).”

“The impact of AI on jobs and the nature of roles has been discussed widely, e.g. (Du & Xie, 2021; Frey & Osborne, 2017; Strich, Mayer & Fiedler, 2021).”

“Such digital technologies permit a shift toward automated modes of governance, which differ radically from their analog counterparts (Strich, Mayer, & Fiedler, 2021; Tarafdar, Page, & Marabelli, 2023).”

“…(Baakeel, 2020; Daugherty et al., 2019; Haefner et al., 2021; Robert et al., 2020; Upadhyay and Khandelwal, 2018), medical diagnosis (Constantinides and Fitzmaurice, 2018; Lebovitz et al., 2019), marketing (Davenport et al., 2020; Rai, 2020), financial advisory (Strich et al., 2021), and others.”

“For example, workers who feel that a new AI tool runs against professional norms may report frustration and show resistance (Chen & Reay, 2021; Strich et al., 2021).”

“The continued development of increasingly sophisticated AI can lead to profound changes for individuals, organizations and society as a whole (Bughin et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2021; Strich et al., 2021).”

“This indicates that the medium through which AI is presented and communicated to consumers can influence their perceptions of AI’s accuracy and their trust in the brand (Mayer et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2021; Strich et al., 2021).”

“Second , when we came up with the facilitators and inhibitors spelled out in Section 4, we realized that our conceptualization is helpful for thinking through conditions that could promote or hinder effective oversight.”

“This phenomenon is commonly referred to as skill erosion or deskilling 2 (Arnold & Sutton, 1998; Strich et al., 2021).”

“Transferring decision-making agency from humans to algorithms may result in loss of critical thinking and domain expertise within organisation (Jussupow et al., 2021; Mayer et al., 2020; Strich et al., 2021).”

“It is acknowledged that with AI, highly skilled people could be replaced with low-skilled personnel (Strich et al., 2021), or the ownership of decisions could be transferred to end-users rather than experts (Rinta-Kahila et al., 2021).”

“…tools under human control; rather, they are viewed as intelligent and autonomous agencies that can make decisions for humans (newlands, 2021; Strich et al., 2021). moreover, employees perceive a loss of control over processes and outputs since these technologies become producers (lammi,…”

“The proposition that AI systems can lead to unintended consequences has been demonstrated in practice (Manyika & Sneader, 2018) and received extensive support in the literature related to the impact of AI (Benbya et al., 2020; Strich et al., 2021).”

“Finally, AI systems can quickly and efficiently perform many tasks that would otherwise be the responsibility of humans, and employees may find their roles in the workplace being simplified or even replaced, posing unprecedented challenges to their professional role identity (Strich et al., 2021).”

“While when AI serves as task substitutes, users tend to resist AI due to the difficulty in AI usage [22], concerns about face loss [84], and feelings of threats to professional identity [83].”

“At the same time, organizations also need to be cognizant of the risks that can arise for human agents when their increased exposure to AI-enabled systems is not managed well, such as conflicts in employee role identity (Strich et al. 2021).”

“…must develop mechanisms to ensure balance, as recent evidence suggests that overreliance on AI can undermine individuals' sense of skills (Strich et al. 2021), stifle creativity and innovation (Rinta-Kahila et al. 2023) or inhibit the intelligence of the group by homogenising its…”

“These and other challenging tensions suggest a range of research questions, which IS researchers have begun to address (Engelmann & Schwabe, 2018; Mantello et al., 2021; Rehe et al., 2020; Strich et al., 2021; You & Robert, 2022).”

“Insecurity can be especially high when these AI-enabled systems are also perceived as being untrustworthy (Thiebes, Lins, & Sunyaev, 2021) or as a challenge to professional roles and identities (Strich et al., 2021).”

“Arti fi cial intelligence (AI) is forecast to play a key role in transforming the future of work (Faraj et al. 2018; Strich et al. 2021).”

“In a second case, described by Strich et al. (2021), another organization and its CEO were seemingly not involved in how their loan consultants’ new AI-assisted way of working was being designed.”

“…that the autonomous capabilities of AI technologies are undermining professionals’ expertise (e.g., Lebovitz et al. 2022; Scarbrough et al. 2024; Strich et al. 2021) and even make professionals obsolete (Caz-zaniga et al. 2024), our research shows how GenAI can contribute to the development of…”

“Further, the use of AI-based loan systems resulted in lower-skilled employees at banks having greater decision-making autonomy when providing customer loans because of the knowledge this system gave them access to (Strich et al., 2021).”

“However, due to the capabilities of AI in performing and/ or augmenting human work, there is evidence that working with AIS can affect people’s role identity, the way in which workers conceptualise the norms, values, and interactions associated with their role [27, 28].”

“According to Strich et al. (2021), the effects of the AI-based technologies depends on the user and the type of support provided by the system.”

“However, another issue is how AI affects professional identities in businesses, particularly when it replaces decision-making roles [106].”

“To date, HCI research has studied the way that users perceive (Diederich et al., 2022), rely on (Fügener et al., 2022), and adapt their behavior to AI-based artifacts (Strich et al., 2021) but has focused on AI-based artifacts as a rather generic, modality-agnostic system class.”

“Research on emotionally intelligent AI has highlighted the importance of emotions in intelligent behavior and decision-making and has been the topic of increasing interest [10-12].”

“Strich et al. (2021) highlight how AI can influ-ence employees’ self-understanding and their perceived social roles at work, presenting both opportunities for growth and challenges related to de-skilling and diminished autonomy.”

“…job quality by altering the tasks workers perform, enabling less-skilled employees to undertake high-skilled tasks (e.g., Brynjolfsson, Li, & Raymond, 2023), influencing autonomy in decision-making (e.g., Strich, Mayer, & Fiedler 2021), and raising concerns about job and financial security.”

“The automation and augmentation capabilities provided by GenAI tools enable workers with varying levels of skill and experience to perform similar tasks more effectively (Strich et al., 2021).”

“In the workplace context, professional identity is shaped by affiliation with one’s profession and the skills associated with it (Strich et al. 2021).”

“This not only complements the expertise of the stakeholder, but recent research also found that this leads to better satisfaction and protection of the role identity of the employee (Strich et al. 2021).”

“For instance, previous research has studied nurses becoming managers (Croft et al., 2015), individuals becoming priests (Kreiner et al., 2006), or artificial intelligence systems altering professionals’ roles (Strich et al., 2021).”

“For instance, while some research has pointed out the identity implications of working with technology (e.g., Miscenko & Day, 2016; Strich et al., 2021), this has been in terms of maintaining and protecting professional identity, without acknowledging how employees may be led to compare themselves…”

“By analysing transactional data, AI systems detect anomalies indicative of fraud, enabling real-time interventions [3].”

“Several studies have examined the negative impacts of service robots on staff and have confirmed the adverse effects from using service robots from multiple perspectives (Strich et al., 2021).”

“Overall, our analysis was guided by best practices that have been previously employed in prior information systems studies (e.g., Cram et al., 2021, Lansing et al., 2018, Strich et al., 2021, Webster, 1998) to ensure that we, too, would arrive at a robust and reliable result.”

“A marked interest in the domain of emotionally perceptive AI, highlighting the cardinal role of emotions in shaping intelligent conduct and deliberative processes, has been noticed [22,23] .”

“Moreover, AI enables low-skilled employees to handle complex tasks that previously might have required specialisation or training (Mayer, Strich and Fiedler, 2020; Strich, Mayer and Fiedler, 2021).”

“Research has long high-lighted this threat that human knowledge can diminish when human agents are given sophisticated decision-making tools (Arnold and Sutton 1998; Rinta-Kahila et al. 2018; Strich, Mayer, and Fiedler 2021).”

“Additionally, the development of such AI systems is not only legally pertinent but also mirrors ongoing, realistic projects in the industry (e.g., Strich et al. 2021).”

“In a case study by Strich et al. [82], loan officers, whose primary task was to input information into an AI-based system and communicate the AI-based decision to loan applicants, were found to start manipulating the input data to be able to affect the AI-based outputs and thus regain their…”

“Substitution of human competence by AI can lead to focusing on social interactions with customers when trusting the algorithmic decision (Strich et al., 2021).”

“The reality is that AI will enrich, rather than replace, the role of professionals [41].”

“Furthermore, the finance industry has been found to be the most stressful business sector (The Global Treasurer, 2018) and perceived to yield unforeseen consequences related to AI decision-making (Strich et al., 2021).”

“In this scenario, AI implementation constitutes a signi fi cant threat for physicians ’ professional identity (Goto, 2021; Mirbabaie et al., 2022; Petriglieri, 2011; Strich et al., 2021).”

“Recent discourse on the use of AI in making HR-related decisions points to both the bright and the darker side (Bankins et al. 2022; Strich et al. 2021).”