Leading by Algorithm: Investigating User Requirements for Automated Leadership Agents
Abstract
Automated leadership, where AI-driven systems perform tasks traditionally handled by human leaders, isincreasingly relevant in today’s evolving workplace. Yet, their application in traditional organizationalsettings remains limited. This study explores how to design such systems for effective adoption. Drawingon semi-structured interviews with 24 German leaders and three focus groups with employees (plus a fourthfocus group for validation), we identify 13 critical design requirements: personalization, transparency,fairness, co-creation, autonomous operation with human veto, no visible control function, functionality,data security, privacy, visible benefit, avatars, playfulness, and usability. These factors expand theleadership-technology acceptance model (L-TAM) by emphasizing leadership-specific requirements (e.g.,personalization and fairness) and pointing to broader considerations like co-creation and data privacy. Thefindings offer a structured foundation for researchers and practitioners to develop automated leadershipsystems that enhance efficiency while maintaining user acceptance.
Keywords
Automated leadership; user requirements; technology acceptance; AI; conversational agents