When organizations leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to automate processes previously performed by people, it frequently causes uncertainty and fear among those affected. An often suggested way for organizations to navigate such challenges is to seek guidance from AI ethics principles. Leaders, however, find it difficult to make practical use of these abstract, high-level principles. Based on a case study of the large-scale implementation of robotic process automation at an energy service provider in Germany, we provide recommendations for translating AI ethics principles into practice.

Industrie 4.0 bringt neben vielen Potenzialen auch eine erhebliche Komplexitätssteigerung mit sich. Um dieser effektiv zu begegnen, bieten Demonstratoren einen wertstiftenden Beitrag. Ihr Einsatz erlaubt eine nutzerzentrierte Systementwicklung mit einhergehender Komplexitätsreduktion durch Modellierung und Simulation. Dieser Beitrag untersucht ihre Potenziale am Beispiel des Projektes „ConSensE“ mit Fokus auf Sensortechnologien und deren Nachrüstung.

Purpose The organizational digital transformation (ODT) in companies presents small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – who remain at the beginning of this transformation – with the challenge of offering digital services based on sensor technologies. Against this backdrop, the present paper identifies ways SMEs can enable digital servitization through sensor technology and defines the possible scope of the organizational transformation process. Design/methodology/approach Around 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from different hierarchical levels across the German manufacturing SME ecosystem. Using the Gioia methodology, fields of action were identified by focusing on influencing factors and opportunities for developing these digital services to offer them successfully in the future. Findings The complexity of existing sensor offerings must be mastered, and employees' (data) understanding of the technology has increased. Knowledge gaps, which mainly relate to technical and organizational capabilities, must be overcome. The potential of sensor technology was considered on an individual, technical and organizational level. To enable the successful implementation of service offerings based on sensor technology, all relevant stakeholders in the ecosystem must network to facilitate shared value creation. This requires standardized technical and procedural adaptations and is an essential prerequisite for data mining. Originality/value Based on this study, current problem areas were analyzed, and potentials that create opportunities for offering digital sensor services to manufacturing SMEs were identified. The identified influencing factors form a conceptual framework that supports SMEs' future development of such services in a structured manner.

Although firms rely on employees’ innovative work behaviour and effective leadership to achieve service innovation performance, these relations remain underexplored, especially regarding digital leadership. We conceptualise a digital leader’s capabilities and explore influences on innovative work behaviour and service innovation performance, using the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical lens. Applying a multi-method exploratory research design, our qualitative results, based on 34 expert interviews, deliver a taxonomy of digital leadership capabilities along three dimensions. With 249 survey participants, we quantitatively tested dimensional influences individually (multidimensional view) and collectively (unidimensional view) using structural equation modelling. In line with our mediation results, both views are significantly positively related to innovative work behaviour; still, only the unidimensional view significantly influences service innovation performance. Our results underpin the comprehensive character of digital leadership capabilities contributing to innovation research with a new “antecedal” perspective. We also provide practical relevance by revealing innovation-effective leadership capabilities.

Introduction: In this qualitative study, we examine digital leadership (DL) capabilities and their positive influence on the management of technology-driven change by leveraging service innovations. The context of digital transformation (DT) has triggered a new leadership paradigm, among others referred to as digital leadership (DL). However, despite its practical relevance, leadership research has yet paid little attention to conceptualise DL as an approach to digitally transform organisations. Methods: Drawing on mid- and top-level mangers’ experiences with service innovation projects, and based on Grounded Theory, we develop a taxonomy of DL-related capabilities and a conceptual framework which exemplifies their influences on dynamic service innovation capabilities (DSICs). DSICs build on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV) and represent the “organisational muscle” to repeatedly deliver service innovations indicating an effective management of technology-driven change. Results and Discussion: Taxonomy results show that aggregated dimensions in terms of a digital leader’s personal, social, and organisational capital serve as underpinnings (DL-related capabilities) to drive strategic change in DT contexts. The conceptual framework further reveals that especially the personal and organisational capital of a digital leader owns several strong and moderate influences on DSICs which demonstrates DL’s “long arm” on the management of technology-driven change. Our findings contribute to leadership research by advancing the conceptualisation of DL and by adding a novel micro-foundational perspective towards the DCV discourse. As organisations struggle to realise the full benefits of DT initiatives, our results also provide a valuable contribution for practitioners by supporting them to strategically prepare for the human-related challenges of DT.