Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Artificial intelligence is widely promoted as a force multiplier for organisations, promising greater efficiency, faster analysis, and improved decision-making. Yet when AI is embedded carelessly into everyday workflows, it can erode the very human capabilities that make firms distinctive and competitive. This article argues that AI adoption carries three underappreciated organisational risks: employees may stop exercising critical judgment as they cognitively offload analysis to fluent machine outputs; moral and strategic rules may become buried inside opaque systems rather than debated through visible organisational structures; and social ties may weaken as shared deliberation is replaced by individualised, machine-mediated workflows. Drawing on examples from telecommunications, banking, and advertising, the article shows how organisations can protect their competitive “DNA” by identifying critical human capabilities before automation, preserving deliberative structures that produce expertise, and rebuilding the communities of judgment, trust, and accountability that AI can thin out. The central message is not that organisations should resist AI, but that they must deploy it with a clear understanding of what machines cannot replace: experiential expertise, ethical responsibility, strategic interpretation, and shared purpose. Used well, AI can augment human judgment; used carelessly, it can make organisations more automated but less adaptive, more efficient but less wise, and ultimately more fragile.
Language: English
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7159902753
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