Organizing expectations: the co-constitutive dynamics of AI imaginaries

Abstract This study examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is constituted as valuable within organizational settings through communicative practices that mobilize sociotechnical imaginaries of AI and expectations of specific AI models. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a commercial collaboration between an AI company and its client, the study explores how organizational actors manage, negotiate, and anticipate expectations surrounding a customized AI model. Rather than focusing on AI’s technical properties, the analysis attends to how collectively held visions of desirable futures and anticipated capabilities constitute AI’s organizational value. The findings highlight the role of sociotechnical imaginaries and expectations in co-constituting investments and the development of AI, suggesting how AI may function as a placeholder for broader managerial aspirations, especially when actors lack technical knowledge. In doing so, the article contributes to research on AI as a co-organizing force, offering insights into the communicative (re)constitution of technology’s worth and its impact on organizational realities.