AI in management practice: Synergies and tensions between new tools for analysis and new approaches to control

This project investigates how AI tools (e.g. advanced analytics, automated decision-making, and deep learning algorithms) challenge principles of management control.

The significance of AI in management can be understood in relation to current changes in two areas: new analytical tools make new practices of analysis possible, at the same as new ideas emerge about how to approach control. However, little is known regarding the ways in which new technology may reinforce or contradict established practices.

The key research problem therefore refers to how the relation between analysis and control changes with data-driven analytics and automation.

The aim of this project is to theorise the conditions that digitalisation and AI technology provides for management control.

In response, this proposal outlines a study that observes ongoing developments in analysis (the development of data-driven analytics technology) and control (changes to the strategic management control approach) in a large organisation over a period of three years to explore the relation between these two developments.

The project applies a qualitative, case-based research approach that combines direct observations, interviews, document analysis, and moderated workshops.

The project is theoretically positioned within social studies of accounting, to which the study contributes on how new technology changes some of the previously documented roles of information systems in organisations and society.