AI and the Future of Work

Éditeurs invités

• Robert Davison, City University of Hong Kong
• Philip Wu, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Ajay Kumar, Emlyon Business School
• Efpraxia Zamani, Durham University

Synthèse

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming work and labour across organizations and sectors. This special issue moves beyond polarized narratives to examine how AI is reshaping workplace experiences, organizing labour, and affecting workers. Drawing on Information Systems' sociotechnical tradition, the call invites rigorous research examining the complex interplay between technology, organizations, and workers.

The special issue addresses significant gaps in current research, particularly invisible labour like data labelling concentrated in the Global South, care work in undervalued sectors, and how AI may exacerbate or mitigate workplace inequality. It welcomes contributions examining worker agency, identity, skill development, voice in AI-augmented environments, and governance challenges posed by self-evolving AI systems.

Thèmes proposés

• Compared to previous generations of information systems, how do new AI technologies reshape the distribution, delegation, performance, and evaluation of work tasks, and with what consequences for workers?
• How does working with AI tools alter the trajectories of learning, skill development, and professional identity formation among workers?
• How do workers make sense of AI-induced changes to their work, and how do they negotiate new spaces for meaning, agency, creativity, and identity in AI-augmented environments?
• Whose labour makes AI systems work and what does its erasure from dominant narratives of AI-augmented work reveal about how value, skills and visibility are constructed?
• How does the adoption of AI relate to workplace inequality within and across organisations, occupations, and sectors, and how are such inequalities manifested differently across the Global North and South?
• How do GenAI and emergent agentic AI reconfigure material and human agencies in the workplace, and what new theoretical frameworks are needed to account for their dynamic, self-evolving character?
• What does the growing capacity of AI agents to learn, adapt, and make consequential decisions mean for accountability, responsibility, and the governance of work outcomes?
• As AI becomes increasingly embedded in organisational routines, what conditions give rise to over-reliance, automation bias, and the erosion of human oversight and professional judgement?

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