Paper Number
1586
Paper Type
Complete Research Paper
Abstract
Organizations must align their strategies and renew their capabilities to create business value from advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Ambidextrous leadership is relevant here, as leaders must decide how, when, and where to deploy AI, balancing between its use for increased efficiency (exploitation) and for innovation (exploration). Making such strategic choices calls for AI literacy, comprising certain skills and knowledge. Through an online survey, we identified that leaders’ AI literacy is a strong predictor of achieving ambidextrous leadership and making profound choices about which organizational capabilities should be developed to achieve AI transformation successfully. Our findings demonstrate the importance of balancing investments in both tangible organizational resources, especially data governance, and those that are intangible, such as having an open culture with dynamic workforce capabilities. Notably, leaders’ AI knowledge is more important than their AI experience for making balanced AI-related decisions.
Recommended Citation
Hammerschmidt, Teresa; Stolz, Katharina Anna; and Posegga, Oliver, "How Leaders' Ambidexterity and Literacy Impact the AI Capabilities of Organizations" (2024). ECIS 2024 Proceedings. 14.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2024/track04_impactai/track04_impactai/14
How Leaders' Ambidexterity and Literacy Impact the AI Capabilities of Organizations
Organizations must align their strategies and renew their capabilities to create business value from advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Ambidextrous leadership is relevant here, as leaders must decide how, when, and where to deploy AI, balancing between its use for increased efficiency (exploitation) and for innovation (exploration). Making such strategic choices calls for AI literacy, comprising certain skills and knowledge. Through an online survey, we identified that leaders’ AI literacy is a strong predictor of achieving ambidextrous leadership and making profound choices about which organizational capabilities should be developed to achieve AI transformation successfully. Our findings demonstrate the importance of balancing investments in both tangible organizational resources, especially data governance, and those that are intangible, such as having an open culture with dynamic workforce capabilities. Notably, leaders’ AI knowledge is more important than their AI experience for making balanced AI-related decisions.
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