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The authors’ research identified seven best practices of leading companies with a particularly aggressive “All-in-on-AI” approach to Artificial Intelligence technology. 10;

The article examines how successful companies are reskilling and upskilling their employees to help develop, interpret and improve AI systems.

To date, AI technologies are most commonly applied in making business processes more efficient, improving decisions and enhancing existing products and services, but “All-in-on-AI” companies eventually develop use cases across a wide variety of functions and processes, decisions and products or services.

While many have predicted that AI would replace humans, AI-powered companies see the primary goal as discovering how to get the best out of both by redesigning jobs, reskilling workers and becoming more efficient and effective in the process.

Companies seeking to get significant returns on their investment in AI should take note of the practices of leading firms.

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the value that human resource (HR) can provide in the effectiveness of leaders and managers.

Two complementary Towers Watson studies – the 2014 Global Workforce Study (GWS) of over 32,000 employees, and the 2014 Global Talent Management & Rewards Study (TM&R) of 1,637 organizations – formed the research basis for the article. The TM&R study was fielded from April to June 2014 in 31 markets around the world and includes responses from 1,637 participating organizations in a range of industries. The GWS covers some 32,000 employees from a population of full-time employees working in large- and mid-sized organizations across a range of industries in 26 markets around the world. It was fielded online during April and May 2014.

A key role of HR is ensuring that the organization has the right people performing well in leadership roles at all levels. This means HR must focus attention in five key areas: job architecture, incumbent assessment, performance definition, recognition for success and building leadership capacity. It is also up to HR to dispel the notion that “soft skills” should be subordinate to “hard skills”, which are often seen as more important. In fact, soft skills are usually more difficult to master and, in our opinion, are more important – they are what leaders need to maximize performance from others.

Different observers assign a variety of roles to the HR function. These range from compliance enforcer and data administrator to strategic partner and culture creator. The author believes that HR’s most important role may well be ensuring that the organization has an ample supply of leadership and management capability at every level of the enterprise. It is leaders, who envision the future and help people generate the motivation to go there, and managers, who see to it that systems, assets and processes serve their purposes efficiently, who enable the enterprise to make the most of each employee’s contribution.

In a world where technology evolution, demographic shifts and social change are rewriting the rules of the workplace, the author can expect that the role of the HR function will also continue to change. What should not change, however, is the contribution that HR makes toward building and preserving the organization’s leadership and management capacity. In this article, the author makes the case that, despite the many shifts taking place in the business terrain, HR should remain focused on this fundamental goal, acting as ally, trusted advisor and coach.

The value of this article is to provide strategic and practical advice on how HR can influence manager and leader effectiveness.

The evolving digital transformations of organizational processes involve vast complexities. Factors such as labor resources at the individual and team levels that integrate and utilize information resources and evolving technologies to achieve collective intelligence are essential to this process. In order to better understand evolving demands of labor resources, existing research regarding worker/technology interactions for firm performance must be implemented and adapted to the changing market. This paper provides a conceptual research model enabling organizations to better understand the integration of worker/team attributes with collaboration modes, information resources and augmented technologies that yield effective collective intelligence for decision-making.

This manuscript includes a literature review on worker/team attributes interfacing with various technology platforms and the creation of collective intelligence. It then reviews complementary research including leadership elements for organizational outcomes and introduces more current work involving a digital transformation. The literature review provides the underpinnings for a conceptual model that incorporates essential elements for the creation of collective intelligence for decision-making and adds factors that are relevant for digital transformations. These elements include augmented technologies including cognitive technologies, collaborative platforms and worker attributes (skills, social sensitivity, leadership) all of which illustrate components of intellectual capital.

The paper summarizes key findings of existing research in worker/team interactions with technology platforms on organizational performance and provides an applied, conceptual research model incorporating these findings, along with new elements in the digital era for better identifying new worker requirements.

The value of this work is the introduction of an applied conceptual model based on established literature findings that includes new technologies (e.g. cognitive technologies), collaboration modes and worker/team attributes to address the requirements of the evolving knowledge worker in the digital era. It provides a framework to better understand more optimal resource allocations for the creation of collective intelligence and integrates the model components within an intellectual capital framework.

This chapter presents the key results of a research project that explored managing service productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of lived experiences of bank executives employed as ‘knowledge workers’ in the Nigerian banking sector. The study adopted a qualitative phenomenological research design. Data was gathered from 16 Nigerian top bank executives purposively selected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Trans Positional Cognition Approach (TPCA), a new phenomenological research method, was used to analyse the data gathered. The study data analysis yielded five themes; micromanagement practices, use of dysfunctional strategies to drive service operations, deposit mobilisation target as a productivity measure, managerial indifference to potential nescience economy issues and master-servant (power culture) strategy, which epitomises fundamental managerial approaches adopted in the sector. The study identified critical service productivity management issues grounded in reality that influence the capability and potentiality of the study knowledge workers. It also contributes the novel, ‘official knowledge worker lived experience of service productivity model’ for use by decision-makers in the banking sector. Thus, it sets an agenda for these ‘knowledge workers’ line managers’ and bank regulators in the research setting. The study extended the viable system model by applying it in this phenomenological enquiry and using it to explain/deepen our understanding of the findings that emerged. The output of this work contributes to scholarly knowledge on service productivity management from the sub-Saharan African banks’ perspective. It can be generalisable in countries with similar financial and economic characteristics like the research setting.

Document Management and Workflow are technologies designed to support, either the productivity of an organisational process or, alternatively, the productivity of the people who comprise an organisation. This paper describes the motivations and anticipated benefits that could encourage an organisation to seek a technology solution to their existing paperlogged processes. In many areas these technologies are being used to good effect. There is increasing evidence that current systems designs which owe much to Taylor and Deining notions of scientific management and quality systems may not always be appropriate. A new generation of technology is emerging sometimes called ‘Workware’. This technology tries to be ‘Idea’ or ‘Work Object’ centric rather than process centric. Workware aims to establish boundaries within which empowered workers are free to achieve their objectives by any appropriate and valid means. These new technologies promise to support ‘real world’ work more effectively. They also present challenges to those who seek to find excellence through the detailed design and measurement of precise processes repetitively enacted. No conclusions are yet available. The best way to support and value ‘Knowledge Work’ within a business process without snuffing the creative spark on which a business depends for its future seems a worthy area for further exploration.

Generic use of the term “knowledge worker” has resulted in a generic approach to designing office environments for this group. The purpose of this paper is to probe the mobility patterns and motivations of knowledge workers in order to provide a classification of different types of knowledge worker.

The study was undertaken using a range of qualitative research methods including semi‐structured interviews with 20 knowledge workers representing different levels of mobility and experience, ethnographic studies in a media company, real estate business and a public relations firm, and a user workshop. A novel drawing exercise was introduced to elicit responses during the interview process.

Four knowledge worker “character types” emerged from the research: the Anchor and the Connector, who are mainly office‐based, and the Gatherer and the Navigator, who work more widely afield.

This is a small study revealing characteristics particular to the participating individuals and organisations. However, it has wider implications in that the more complex set of requirements revealed by the project requires a more responsive and service‐led approach to office design for knowledge workers and the development of new protocols of use within office space.

The originality/value lies in giving designers and facilities managers an insight into the different needs of knowledge workers, who are commonly treated as a homogeneous group. The typologies are an active tool for better brief‐making in design for creative facilities.

The current interest in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software systems is based primarily on the principle of the system: generating real time data, enabling linkages across functional areas and divisions, and, thereby, promoting the integration of information across all of the units of a business at one time. Indeed, in practice, such a system not only cultivates accurate and timely information which is available for all operations in a company, including those in global locations, but also fosters more effective decision making and the attainment of the competitive advantage. This study, therefore, examines the benefits of implementing an ERP system, in general, and SAP R/3, a type of ERP system in particular, in the headquarters of major corporations in the United States, as well as in the factories of these corporations located in Guadalajara, Mexico. More specifically, eight corporations which have adopted SAP R/3 and include AT&T, Compaq, Eastman Kodak, Hershey Foods, Hewlett‐Packard, IBM, Intel, and Motorola are examined, and the benefits and merit of having the same SAP R/3 software system in their installations in Guadalajara, Mexico are explored.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the rhetoric used to promote enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which are complex organisation-wide software packages inherently connected to the domains of management and organisation.

The study adopts a post-essentialist view on ERP systems and takes the form of a rhetorical analysis. Engaging in rhetorical scholarship in the area of technological change and management fashion literatures, this paper offers a close reading of a management text on ERP systems by Thomas H. Davenport published in 1998 in the Harvard Business Review.

The rhetorical analysis distinguishes and identifies three rhetorical strategies – namely, rationalisation, theorisation and contradiction – used to promote ERP systems and thus involved in the construction of the phenomenon revolving around ERP systems.

In spite of the importance of the rhetorical analysis of information technology in the context in which they operate, this paper argues that constructions of ERP systems should also be analysed beyond organisation-specific considerations. It further suggests that both researchers and practitioners should take seriously the rhetoric invoked by the well-known management writer that may easily go unnoticed.

This is a thought-leadership interview with digital-era experts Thomas Davenport and Nitin Mittal on the strategic desirability and implications for legacy companies on being fully committed to becoming AI-driven businesses.

An interview with thought-leaders in the area of digital strategy.

The interview explains what it means to be an AI-driven company and how to manage the kind of transformation that legacy will need to go through to become AI-fueled leaders in their sector.

The main value is the direct dialog with digital-era experts on their latest research insights.