When Being Managed by Technology: Does Algorithmic Management Affect Perceptions of Workers’ Creative Capacities?

Artificial intelligence is rapidly being integrated into human roles in the workplace. One example is algorithmic management, where employees are supervised in the execution of their tasks by algorithms. Unfortunately, we know little about how algorithmic management affects perceptions of the employees managed by these algorithms. In three experiments, we explore people’s beliefs about the creative capacities of employees managed by algorithms. Our first experiment finds that people in the role of top management in an organization believe employees working under algorithmic (versus human) management are less capable of creative capacities, and these perceptions lead to allocating less money from an innovation budget to algorithm-led teams than to human-led teams. Two follow-up experiments show that these negative effects occur across multiple organizational contexts and remain relatively stable regardless of whether algorithmic management is more or less prevalent in the organization. These results suggest that despite industry narratives arguing intelligent technologies increase innovation generally, specific employees and teams associated with algorithmic management may be perceived and treated as lacking in creativity and less deserving of resources for innovation.