Navigating AI-driven leadership in global organizations : insights from corporate playbooks on power, decisions and bottlenecks

Abstract

In the past few years, AI has changed the way companies decide things and how leaders actually run organizations. The thesis looks at how AI adoption influences leadership in organizations worldwide. The thesis looks closely at three common challenges that show up during adoption: power shifts, decision gaps, and organizational bottlenecks. These challenges are described as leadership friction zones. Power starts to shift when technical experts and AI systems begin to influence decisions that leaders used to make on their own. Decision gaps appear when responsibility isn’t clear. People may not know who is accountable once an algorithm has played a part. Adoption slows down when there are gaps in skills, culture, or governance.

The study combines academic literature with nineteen publicly available corporate AI playbooks from companies such as Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, IBM, Microsoft, PwC, and the World Economic Forum. These playbooks show how real organizations are approaching AI strategy and leadership in practice. Qualitative document analysis was used to look for shared patterns in the materials.

The Leadership Friction Zones framework developed in this thesis is built from patterns found in real corporate AI playbooks. This framework helps companies of any size by giving them a way to spot and handle leadership challenges when they bring in AI. Using the framework helps companies tackle the same kinds of problems others have faced. It builds on what has already worked for leading firms. The analysis shows why leaders need both technical know-how and good judgment about strategy and ethics.