Event Overview
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping work processes and decision-making, yet existing leadership, responsible AI, and future-of-work research offers limited explanation of how humanness can be sustained when algorithmic systems mediate organisational participation. This limitation is consequential because AI-enabled work arrangements risk reducing human involvement to symbolic oversight, undermining judgement, accountability, recognition, and meaningful participation.
To address this challenge, we develop a Relational Techno-Human Leadership Framework (RTHL) that integrates Relational Leadership Theory (RLT) with Socio-Technical Systems (STS). We conceptualise humanness as the organisational condition under which human participation remains meaningful, valued, recognised, and consequential, emerging from the interaction of human actors, algorithmic and robotic system components, and organisational values. Leadership is theorised as a relational human process, while AI functions as a socio-technical component that both enables and constrains participation through its design. The framework identifies three organisational mechanisms and one cross-cutting normative lens that sustain humanness: contestability and explainability structures; accountability architectures and non-delegable decisions; work design and distributed agency; and fairness, ethics, and power. These mechanisms, together with the normative lens, are activated through leadership practices that preserve voice, judgement, authorship, accountability, and recognition. By challenging the assumption that human-in-the-loop arrangements constitute meaningful oversight and demonstrating how they may become symbolic forms of oversight that erode humanness, RTHL advances theory on humanness, responsible AI, and the future of work.
About the Speakers
Dr Irina Heim is a Lecturer in Apprenticeship Programmes and the Army Higher Education Pathway at Henley Business School. She is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Euro-Asian Studies and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK). Irina has 10 years' experience in various top management positions with German global ICT companies and integrates industry knowledge in her teaching and research. Her research interests include business digital transformation and company strategies in response to changes in their environment. She has researched organisations from both developed and emerging countries, covering Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and China.
Dr. Andrei Panibratov is a Full Professor of Strategic and International Management at EMLV Business School (École de Management Léonard de Vinci) in Paris, France. He is a member of the De Vinci Research Center. His work primarily revolves around how global political shifts and economic constraints reshape corporate strategies.