Reading about AI and Meaningful Work with a Humanistic Management Lens

Hosted by the International Humanistic Management Association’s PhD/ECR Discussion Group

The International Humanistic Management Association (IHMA) and its associated PhD network invite students and early career researchers to a reading group which aims to foster rigorous research based on a humanistic paradigm that considers dignity and wellbeing essential to all aspects of social life (Pirson & Lawrence, 2010; Pirson, 2019).

In past years, our reading group examined foundational papers on humanistic management, and surveyed the state of humanistic management research in various sub-disciplines of organizational scholarship. This year, we are developing a humanistic approach, or lens, for reading award-winning articles from across the field of management. We seek to understand how humanistic management offers new ways of seeing established research findings and ask how examples of outstanding scholarship might inform, unpack, or question facets of the emerging humanistic management paradigm.

For our meeting on Monday, February 22nd, at noon Eastern, we will discuss the theme of AI and Meaningful Work in the following papers:

Bunderson, J. S., & Thompson, J. A. 2009. The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 54(1): 32–57. [link]

Agrawal, A., Gans, J. S., & Goldfarb, A. 2019. Artificial Intelligence: The Ambiguous Labor Market Impact of Automating Prediction. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(2): 31–50.

At the session, the reading group hosts will summarize the articles and present a few building blocks of a humanistic management lens for reading. Then the group will discuss the readings in turn and how they respond and relate to the lens. Participants are encouraged to read through the articles beforehand.

Participants who wish to learn more about humanistic management and/or our theme may wish to consult these optional readings:

Pirson, M. 2019. A humanistic perspective for management theory: Protecting dignity and promoting well-being. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(1): 39–57. [link]

Pirson, M. A., & Lawrence, P. R. 2010. Humanism in business—Towards a paradigm shift? Journal of Business Ethics, 93(4): 553–565. [link]

Kellogg, K. C., Valentine, M. A., & Christin, A. 2020. Algorithms at Work: The New Contested Terrain of Control. Academy of Management Annals, 14(1): 366–410. [link]

Choudhury, P., Starr, E., & Agarwal, R. 2020. Machine learning and human capital complementarities: Experimental evidence on bias mitigation. Strategic Management Journal, 41(8): 1381–1411. [link]

Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. 2001. Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2): 179–201. [link]

This event is sponsored by the Albert P. Viragh Institute for Ethics in Business at Duquesne University.

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