Hakeem Owolabi

This study examines the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on leadership in organisations and spotlights the emerging notion of automated leadership. Conventionally, leadership has been noted as human-focused, and thrives on human abilities like empathy, emotional intelligence, decision-making, and interpersonal skills. However, with an unprecedented rise in computer processing power and automation, AI is revolutionising leadership roles, with artificially intelligent agents now performing strategic-level functions hitherto conducted by human-leaders. However, despite the promised potentials and benefits, concerns have surfaced regarding the impacts of AI-automated leadership on team outcomes, particularly conflict management. Therefore, using phenomenology and case study design and focusing on UK organisations in the logistics and warehouse sector-where adoption of AI-powered automated leadership systems has surged-we examine the influence of AI-automated leadership agents on conflicts within working teams. After theoretically examining traditional leadership and team conflict models vis-à-vis AI-automated leadership, the study proceeded to hypothesise and operationalise efficient conflict management approaches for this emerging paradigm.