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).”

“Companies will have to fundamentally transform to either proactively exploit these opportunities or cope reactively with the threats that artificial intelligence poses to their business models and entire industries (Mayer et al. 2020; Strich et al. 2021).”

“On a more positive note, most tasks and occupations still require human involvement or oversight, even if AI is heavily used – and if it is used to augment, it can quickly lift juniors’ work outputs to the level of more senior colleagues (Strich et al., 2021 ).”

“64 Strich et al.’s (2021) study of professional loan consultants underscores this.”

“Consequently, employees must relinquish core activities of their work processes without the ability to interact with the AI system, which can affect their professional role identity [10].”

“First, risk may be created by enabling less skilled and experienced workers to ‘mask’ or disguise a lack of underlying substantive competence (cp Strich et al., 2021, p.319), thereby potentially undermining the skills and knowledge of the profession over time.”

“This is evident in decision support systems, where decision-makers or stakeholders must explain outcomes, such as in loan approval processes [SYX + 20, SMF21] or medical consultations [SCDS77, Swa85, LSG + 19].”

“These reactions may be related to perceptions of threats to professional identity or technological overload, and these factors can act as deterrents to AI-based systems (Kim et al. 2022; Strich et al. 2021).”

“However, a growing number of people express fear about social robots perceiving their advanced capabilities as a potential threat to human identity (Chang and Kim 2022) and the fear of being replaced by autonomous agents (e.g., Strich et al. 2021 ).”

“…consistent, efficient, and accurate performance across business processes, prompting managers to perceive them as reliable actors (e.g., for decision support, process control, and predictive analytics) (Boussioux et al., 2024; Lai & Rau, 2024; Ruan & Mezei, 2022; Strich, Mayer, & Fiedler, 2021).”

“…has provided some insights into the identity work of professional groups working in relative isolation when they are confronted with new ESs (Boudreau et al. 2014, Nelson and Irwin 2014, Strich et al. 2021), prior work has not engaged with the identity work of interdependent professional groups.”

“In some systems humans decide on whether to use the outputs from ML technology (Fügener et al., 2021; Ge et al., 2021) or are expected/forced to follow them (Strich et al., 2021).”

“Artificial intelligence can cross-examine user behaviour and usage analytics, demographic data and other contextual details sourced from different platforms to design user segments and personas that are true to life and not stereotypical [16].”

“This technological disruption is now forcing professionals to reassess their work and renegotiate their occupational identities (Schmitt et al., 2024; Strich et al., 2021).”

“Furthermore, and later, Strich et al. (2021) conducted a qualitative study on the implementation of an AI-based loan system, which significantly changed loan consultants’ roles.”

“The collective body of research underscores the pivotal role of emotional faculties in intelligent behavior and decision-making processes (Duan et al., 2019; Mahmud et al., 2022; Strich et al., 2021).”

“In the workplace, Artificial Intelligence technologies are progressively replacing people's activities, obligations, and decision-making (Strich et al., 2021).”

“This heightened attention to potential threats can alter employees’ behavior, thereby inhibiting their taking charge behavior (Strich et al., 2021).”

“This shift replaces the contextual judgment and creative problem-solving abilities once developed through experience, rendering autonomous decision-making skills increasingly redundant (Strich et al., 2021 ).”

“Second, technological aids may damage professional image (Strich, Mayer, and Fiedler 2021).”

“The (cid:976)irst is the worry about the replacement of jobs, the development of arti(cid:976)icial intelligence makes some simple and repetitive work can be replaced by automation, which may lead to some people engaged in this kind of work face the risk of unemployment [9-12].”

“Although algorithms can increase the fairness, efficiency, and productivity of decisions (Burton et al., 2020), scholars observe negative behavior related to using algorithms when employees do not know how or why an algorithm’s decisions are drawn (Strich et al., 2021; Tambe et al., 2019).”

“Strich F believed that artificial intelligence systems in the workplace had gradually begun to replace more and more employees' work and decision-making, and had sufficient development potential [2].”

“Education and experience of medical records officers, Contract employees are more than permanent employees (Sheikh et al., 2021; Strich et al., 2021).”

“There are concerns that it will lead to disappearance of a significant number of jobs [14, 15] or workers losing aspects of the work that so far has been a core of their professional identity and given a sense of meaning for what they do [30, 47].”

“When work design fails to support these needs, workers may resort to unintended workarounds to meet their needs [21, 81] as we observed with the unintended use of Save-For-Later , Student Messaging , and sharing anonymised interactions with other tutors via private channels before Peer Sharing was…”

“For instance, consultants or managers might react to the adoption of AI systems to maintain their role identity by engaging in different tasks, or by refocusing on customer-centric work to maintain their role identity (Perez et al., 2022; Strich et al., 2021).”

“Professional identity is a set of conceptions about oneself regarding one’s profession, skills and perceptions of oneself (Selenko et al. , 2022; Strich et al. , 2021).”

“Previous studies have shown that AI can reshape professional roles, occupational boundaries, and perceptions of expertise, particularly when AI systems are perceived as substituting or redefining tasks traditionally associated with professional knowledge [13,14,17].”

“AI integration may enhance employee creativity by providing alternative perspectives, facilitating information exploration, and supporting complex cognitive processes [10], [11].”

“…the idea that effort in pursuit of excellence is inherently worthwhile connects with other research exam - ining reactions to work being replaced or transformed by AI, including resistance arising from perceived threats to professional identity [e.g., 44–46 ] and the meaning of work [e.g., 47–51 ].”

“In addition, recent work highlights how substitutive AI systems may fundamentally challenge or reshape employees’ professional role identity, underlining the close link between AI-related self-concepts and work identity (Shonhe & Min, 2025; Strich et al., 2021).”

“In the context of digital transformation, responsible HR data analysis enables organizations to balance analytical efficiency with fairness considerations [30], [31].”

“Furthermore, prior research suggests that while AI can augment lower-skilled employees, it may simultaneously challenge the role identity of higher-skilled workers, as their distinctive contributions become less visible (Strich et al. 2021).”

“Identity loss in professional roles (-) [47] 1) The topic of people Many articles discussed the positive impacts of AI on customers and employees as shown in Table 6.”

“This makes employees feel that their authority to make decisions is getting reduced [19], [20], Employees feel more engaged and confident when they have the freedom to use their judgment and experience to make meaningful decisions in workplace.”

“Second, negative emotional reactions include the erosion of employees’ skills, roles, and identities (Lee and Sun 2023; Strich, Mayer, and Fiedler 2021).”

“This result aligns with the augmentation perspective of AI, which emphasizes the complementary role of intelligent systems in improving work processes, supporting decision-making, and strengthening organizational performance without necessarily displacing workers [19], [20].”

“Employees experience severe stress as a result of having to redefine the meaning of their work and their relationship with their coworkers (some of whom are not humans but robots) [ 102 , 103].”

“The digital transformation brings both opportunities and challenges: large-scale administrative data enables evidence-based decisions, but organizational adoption depends on methods that are transparent, interpretable, scalable, and trustworthy [3], [4].”

“GiventheenormousopportunityofincorporatingAIdecision-making into hiring (e.g., reducing human biases [1] and making more accurate and timely decisions [2]), AI has been increas-inglyadoptedbyorganizationsforefficienttalentacquisition[3], evolvingbeyondsupportinghumanstomakingautonomousde-cisions[4].”

“Studies indicate that AI contributes to evidence-based management by facilitating predictive modeling and optimizing strategic resource allocation [10].”