AI’s place in organizations and day-to day work life

From the big number of great and exciting challenges that the modern society is facing today, one of the most important and impressive one is the creation and shaping of the new technological revolution, which foresees the transformation of human kind (Schwab 2017, 7). According to Schwab, this transformation will change our lives, our work and our ways of communication. The future of work is changing already, and we can expect certain implications (Burke & Ng, 2006). If we take a step back and think of the origins of automation in the work environment, in the past it mainly took place in factories predicting to suppress repetitive jobs and revalue/re-evaluate and upgrade the jobs that cannot be simply replaced by automation (Friedmann 1961, 114-115). Already in 1980s upcom-ing revolution in the office by computer technologies was predicted to improve the productivity of white-collar labor force (Zisman 1978, 1).

Speed and precision became few of the most appreciative assets at work in the labor force and the term “speed as a skill” started to be used as a very valuable quality (Friedmann 1992, 9-10).

Besides improving the speed, automation has also been implemented to benefit predictability and efficiency (Dodgson et al., 2008, 251). Automation that was based on computer-integrated manufac-ture (CIM) sought solutions to number of problems. Among others, the key identified problems were:

how to produce high-quality standards, deal with high and rising overhead costs, manage poor sales forecasts, introduce new products on schedule and deliver them on time, finally, cut long production lead times (Dodgson et al., 2008, 248-251).

Technologies are often introduced to organizations to boost productivity and it happens based on three principles dependable on the perception of the technological world (Murphy & Pardeck, 1986). First one is the fact that people are primarily motivated by material rewards. Since technology

can improve work efficiency, this improvement affects the attitude of employees and can be enhanced in terms of how they feel and relate to their jobs. In other words, motivation can depend on working conditions (Gällstedt 2003, 449-455). Second principle is the productivity being compared with the generation of material items. Material gain is given a lot of attention in viewing of technological world. Gathering tangible assets turn out to be the measure of worth both personally and profession-ally. On the other hand, this principle is viewed as abstract since it doesn’t consider social factors related to productivity. Thus, productivity is entirely based on logical thinking without considering that economic growth has very little value as a concept if separated from social relations. The third principle is technology is believed to cut down systematic barriers to productivity. When a company is conceived in a mechanistic way, it can achieve integration between different elements of the work process. When every part of the labor division is aimed at fulfilling a need which is essential for organizational survival, a fundamental condition has been created to make sure that any action is methodized in the most explicit and logical matter. If this principle is followed, company is com-pletely rationalized and can be controlled without major difficulties (Weber 2009, 123; 329-341).

These three principles are presented as conditions that are essential to sustain long-term economic growth within the productivity of organizations (Murphy & Pardeck, 1986).

It is also noted that regardless of this rapid development, jobs won’t be replaced by AI any time soon, however people using AI at work will start replacing those who don’t and that applies to almost every industry (Ransbotham et al., 2017, 14). Business success is dependent on diversity and inclu-sion and the future most effective teams are predicted to have nonhumans (robots and algorithms) as a new dimension into diversity at workplace (Brown, 2017).

Alvin Toffler, a futurist, writer and a businessman tells a story in his book “The Third wave”

about the three waves revolutionizing peoples’ lives throughout many decades in the past and years to come (Toffler 1987, 2). The third wave focuses on the information and technology revolution fol-lowing the two revolutionary waves: agricultural and industrial. He argues that civilizations don’t do anything: people do (Toffler 1980, 21) and points out that it’s not limited to technology and econom-ics. It’s a combination of interrelated institutions and principles, such as technological, economic, organizational, social and political that are combined into one precisely fitting mechanism or form a single ecosystem.

According to Toffler, first wave started to lose its strengths between 1650-1750s with the raise of the second wave that created industrial society and conquered the World. In the mid of 1950s after expanding for 200 years the third wave went into decline in industrialized countries. Toffler talked about 1950s as a breaking point of the second wave as that was the time when the number of intel-lectual workers and workers in the service area exceeded the number of industrial workers in the

United States for the first time. If during the second industrial wave when people had to consider creating some products, their only focus was around making profit and making themselves more powerful, the period of third wave introduced ecological and social restrictions in addition to eco-nomic and strategic interests. The real contradiction of the third wave arises from the second one linearly. There is only one possibility: either we will control the technologies, or we will be controlled by them. “We” in this content stands for general public and not only for scientists, economists and politicians.

Today for the first-time humanity can and should learn how to choose only those innovations that will bring the most positive social and economic impact. Author also stresses that by entering the third wave people should think of lesser educated and their future because they will have difficulties later. He encourages to stop looking for profits alone but start thinking about the change in the work-ing environments and the impact it brwork-ings to society and people. He claims that every business idea is threatened by what is coming next. One trend that Toffler also predicted in his book was the shift towards working from home and it is clearly seen today. As we see today working remotely is be-coming a new normal in the modern workplaces (Brotherton 2012; Johns & Gratton 2013, Michaud 2018; Snyder 2012).

Going back to the Tofflers’ book, in the chapter “Electronic Cottage” he claimed that the de-velopment of computers and other network devices would create prerequisites of moving some of the working place from offices and factories to home. He predicted the process to be long and most likely painful and would require certain changes in management systems and motivation. However, he pointed out even back then in 1980s that the trends are strongly moving towards working from digital home. It is caused by the increasing time for commuting to work and money spent travelling, as well as by the increasing quality of communications. Social factors also facilitate the movement. The shorter the working day becomes, the relatively longer it will take to travel to the place of work and the harder it will be to justify the day. Moving a significant part of the work at home will have a profound impact on human lives. The population of residential areas will become more stable because people will move less often due to a change of job. This will mean closer ties between neighbors and greater involvement of people in solving long-term issues of communal life. The use of energy will decrease and the need for decentralization of its sources will increase. This will lead towards the increase in demand for small alternative energy, for example, solar panels. This will help reduce the burden on the environment. The new economic sectors will win, and the old industrial ones will lose.

Workers at home will more likely to become entrepreneurs possessing their own means of production.

Distance work will make communication at work between colleagues more impersonal, but the face-to-face relationships at home and with neighbors will become emotionally richer and closer.

To sum up, the trends in the workplaces are shifting and new options for business entrepreneur-ships are being introduced, such as:

• Community impact

• Environmental impact

• Economic impact

• Psychological impact (Toffler 1980, 210-222).

3 DATA AND METHODS

This chapter provides a brief overview of the case and as the methodology applied to it present-ing the qualitative research that has been conducted in this thesis with a spresent-ingle case study.