Type: article
Abstract: The rapid uptake of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in organizations raises questions on how to regulate emerging technologies whose risks and uses remain in flux. In the absence of comprehensive external regulation, organizations are compelled to engage in regulatory work despite limited control, expertise, and regulatory templates to rely on. Prior research on regulation and information technology focuses largely on compliance with exogenous rules or deliberate self-regulation, leaving undertheorized how regulation unfolds while both a technology and its appropriate uses are still in the making. Drawing on a field study at a leading European business school, we examine what we conceptualize as unwilful regulatory work: a necessity-driven process of defining appropriate technology use without clear mandates or stable reference points. Initially reactive, this work becomes increasingly distributed and purposive as organizational members confront and learn from recurrent tensions between agnostic rules and the situated realities in which they are enacted.
Author: van den Broek, Elmira
Institution: Stockholm School of Economics
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222908093