Algorithmic Leadership: The Future is Now

Leadership of place in virtual environments

“…Objects like computers, the water cooler, and smart phones impact a person's behaviors and identities, which is seen as influencing leadership (Ropo and Salovaara, 2019). Virtual objects like computer applications and program Artificial Intelligence could be seen as having the same leadership influence (Harms and Han, 2019) and arguably engage in many of the major common types of leadership behaviors (Yukl, 2013). Understanding of the world and meaning attached to it are impacted by these spaces and objects (Ropo et al, 2013).…”

“…The rise of applications acting as substitutes for human managers, or in fact essentially being the hierarchical leader, has led to the concept of algorithmic leadership. Algorithmic leadership had been defined as Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications assigning tasks for workers, informing them the ways to do those tasks, determining compensation rates for tasks, and ultimately evaluating workers performance through collected data (Harms and Han, 2019). These represent tasks that are often seen as part of the role of managers or leaders (Yukl, 2013).…”

“…This can include the app providing targeted messages related to workers’ interests to encourage working more hours. It might also include suggestions on how to be more successful (Harms and Han, 2019). The application possesses significant data about workers that could inform coaching like behavior personalized for particular workers.…”

“…Gig economy work involves individuals acting in a freelance role for organizations, doing individual tasks for organizations either with physical customers (such as Uber) or fully virtual tasks (such as website content creation and item categorization) through crowdsourcing sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk or freelancing sites like TaskRabbit (Petriglieri, et al, 2019; Schmidt and Jettinghoff, 2016). For many gig economy workers their official connection with an organization is just their “leader,” the application’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Harms and Han, 2019; Rosenblat and Stark, 2016), with the application engaging in many traditional leadership activities. Many gig workers have been found to create their own communities of fellow workers, working together in ways that can be seen as shared leadership.…”

Envisioning Future Leadership, Part II: Expanding Concepts of Structure

“…Or, structure may refer to the disciplines and demographics that future leaders will transcend as Hughes and Denison () describe, for example, no longer “educational leader” or “(x religion) leader.” Or, structure may mean the conceived and perceived identity of an organization, as Nerenz () discusses in the context of vision statements. Moreover, tying into the last Symposium, structure may mean the technology that underpins, supports, or even replaces the traditional roles, activities, and decisions of leaders, and Harms and Han () discuss in Algorithmic Leadership: The Future is Now .…”