Perceived Legitimacy of Organizational Disciplinary Decisions: Comparing Human, Human-AI, and AI Decision-Making

Sammanfattning

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in organizational decision-making, including within human resource management. While previous research has examined AI in areas such as recruitment and selection, less is known about how AI involvement affects perceptions of legitimacy in workplace disciplinary decisions. The purpose of this experimental vignette study was to examine whether perceived legitimacy differs depending on whether an organizational disciplinary decision is made by a human HR manager, a human HR manager supported by AI, or an autonomous AI system. Participants (N = 180) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions and read a vignette describing an employee who repeatedly violated a policy for handling confidential information and received a writtenwarning. After reading the vignette, participants rated the perceived legitimacy of the decisionon a four-item scale. A one-way ANOVA and planned comparisons were conducted to test the hypotheses. The results did not provide statistical support for the hypotheses, as perceived legitimacy did not differ significantly across the three decision-making conditions. These findings suggest that, in the present vignette-based study, AI involvement in disciplinary decision-making did not clearly reduce perceived legitimacy. The study contributes to research on AI in organizational decision-making by examining a disciplinary context, where questions of authority and legitimacy are especially relevant.