Leadership and algorithms or how digital tools affect the role of managers
Nick Butler, Professor of Business Administration at Stockholm University, conducts research in Critical Leadership Studies - a field that examines the role of companies and business in society. Above all, it is the role of leadership that interests him.
Traditionally, leadership has been linked to soft values, where a leader’s role is to ensure that staff are inspired and engaged and see meaning in what they do. What happens when that task is digitalised and mediated by algorithms? Critical leadership studies does not necessarily mean that you are critical of the field, but more importantly that you take an analytical approach to leadership”, says Butler.
According to Nick Butler, leadership is an area that contains a lot of implicit social values. For example, a leader is often expected to be powerful and charismatic.
“We have so many preconceptions about what a leader should be", he says. "They are expected to be superheroes who can radically transform an organisation through the strength of their personality. When I teach organisation studies, I usually ask students who they imagine when they think of a leader. They often mention well-known business leaders such as Elon Musk or political icons such as Martin Luther King Jr. They rarely think of the more low-key managers they encounter in their own everyday lives”.
How does this relate to research on algorithmic leadership?
There's an inherent tension in the encounter between the leadership role and digital tools - a clash between soft human skills and quantitative metrics, says Prof. Butler. And all while the use of AI-driven tools in organisations is increasing. They are designed to measure employee motivation levels and enable management to keep track of how staff are doing. Butler's team wants to see what choices managers and leaders make as the use of digital leadership tools becomes more common. By using qualitative methods, the research team is forming a picture of how the tools work in practice.
"Right now, we're looking at a tool that sends daily questions to employees through an app: How are you feeling today? Do you feel engaged? Do you need support? Are you looking forward to going to work?”, he said.
According to Prof. Butler, the basic idea behind the tool is to quickly and efficiently find out how employees are feeling. Are they motivated? Or completely unmotivated? The idea is that anonymous data will provide managers with a signal of what needs to be done. The goal is to prevent employees from leaving the company or organisation. Retaining staff can be difficult in a competitive industry, and hiring new employees is often time-consuming and expensive.
Will it work?
It is, however, a bit paradoxical that a tool supposed to focus on well-being and human values operates according to predictive analytics. Does the tool produce the desired results, taking into consideration that humans are complicated creatures?
The outcome is very dependent on how the responses are interpreted by management. The surveys are anonymous – the idea is that they should provide a general indication of how staff are feeling. In the best-case scenario, any negative response would lead the manager to approach the team without trying to identify the individual who responded. The negative response could then lead to a positive change for everyone”, Prof. Bultler explained.
In practice, however, a negative response may spark a guessing game where the manager tries to find out who the dissatisfied employee is. According to Prof. Butler, there is a risk that the tool could generate tensions in the workplace.
"In the worst case, the manager sees negative responses as a failure and so misses the whole point. It is important to use the tools as they are intended: a starting point for face-to-face discussions between individuals or in groups. Ultimately, it is leadership skills that determine how things turn out”.
As there is not much previous research on algorithmic leadership, Nick Butler and his research team are pioneers in this area.
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