Alexander Richter, Victoria University of Wellington

João Baptista, Lancaster University; Nova SBE

Ella Hafermalz, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Mareike Möhlmann, Bentley University

Daniel Schlagwein, The University of Sydney

Mari-Klara Stein, Tallinn University of Technology

Digital technologies, in particular artificial intelligence (AI), are reconfiguring how, where, and when work gets done, marking a shift from tools designed to support human tasks to agentic systems that collaborate with and even manage human workers. AI technologies are evolving to work autonomously or within hybrid collaboration systems of human and digital agents.

Research on AI and human-AI collaboration has advanced from studying AI that supports human tasks to AI agents’ ability to make independent management decisions and regulate and manage human work. The future of working with AI is, however, still unknown and emergent, with both utopian and dystopian perspectives shaping our understanding of opportunities and challenges of their adoption and use in organizations, work and other spheres of our lives.

Prior research has helped make sense of and anticipate important side effects of AI-driven management, new forms of hidden and unrecognized ‘meta-work’ performed by employees, and the ‘ripple effects’ of introducing such technologies to the workplace. For example, research has focused on the reconfiguration of spatialtemporal dimensions and ‘ways of seeing’ in the workplace, tensions between craft and mechanical work, and a wide range of unintended effects in work contexts such as loss of critical thinking and changes in how human work is coordinated as well as the authority and values that underpin it.

In addition to such scholarship, several calls and arguments point to limitations of existing knowledge and invite new research to develop relevant theories and methods to study human-AI collaboration and how this is reconfiguring work. For example, theories that take a relational view of AI, recognize that its functionality and affordances emerge dynamically and with use and therefore specific systems and configurations need to be studied in-situ. Further, emergent research on AI safeguards argue for AI’s progressive encapsulation and new forms of socio-technical reversal and socio-technical envelopment of AI to allow organizations to capture the value of AI while minimising exposure to risks. Such research is important in informing scholarship and practice, influencing design considerations to develop responsible and ethical AI systems, and help with retaining humans-in-the-loop in AI-centric processes, which is needed to manage, for example, emerging tensions between automation and augmentation.

This special issue is particularly interested in research that explores the unique nature of human-AI collaboration, emerging AI technologies and ecosystems and how AI changes human work practices and its implications. That is, this special issue seeks new theoretical perspectives or methods and novel unified approaches for the study of AI. This special issue is open to innovative research that helps understand emerging digital work configurations that are reshaping the functioning and structures of organizations, as well as to research on new and future forms of digital working and organizing. Thus, we also welcome studies focusing on various (non-AI) digital technologies that are altering human work practices, such as non-learning algorithms, blockchain technologies, robotics, and remote working solutions, even when AI is discussed in the broader context, more in the background, or not at all.

Our interest in AI-human collaboration and the changing nature of work more broadly builds on discussions in the growing community of the AIS Special Interest Group on the Changing Nature of Work and the various related workshops and IS conference tracks on AI, Changing Nature of Work, Digital Work, Future of Work etc. As members of this community, we have seen a growing interest in exploring the evolution of AI and other emergent digital technologies as synergistic partners amplifying (or challenging) human creativity, judgment and contextual understanding. Digital technologies are set to transform work practices, organizational structures and decision-making, while raising critical questions about the value of existing theories and frameworks to study these meta-human phenomena as well as their human, societal, ethical and environmental implications in practice.

This special issue invites submissions that critically examine the current and expected future effects of human-AI collaboration and other emerging digital work configurations. It seeks theoretical, empirical, and design-oriented contributions that study the transformative potential of digital-human collaboration. This special issue seeks work that inspires innovative strategies, ethical solutions, and sustainable models for AI-and-digitally-driven work, and informs future digital work scenarios. The special issue takes a forward-looking perspective, aiming to gather research that follows good research practice in the use of AI but is open to work on developing prospective scenarios and actively creating preferable futures – Future Making. The special issue welcomes all types of research papers. This may involve developing new concepts, and ways of theorizing or integrating concepts from different fields and in using innovative methods and approaches to capture the role of technology in the changing nature of work and the future of organizing.

Potential topics

• Capture and conceptualize emergent configurations and types of interactions and collaborations between humans and AI.
• Exploring the shift from human-assisted technology to technology-managed human work and anticipate future trends.
• Showcasing the integration and adoption of AI in complex work environments and suggest how to manage these processes.
• Study the effects of AI-driven solutions and immersive technologies on collaboration, communication, and productivity in organizations.
• Explore longitudinal third-order effects of AI agents in work and social fabric of organizations.
• Explore new forms of trust development in AI agents within the workplace.
• Conceptualize risks and opportunities in integrating AI agents in human work.
• Ethical challenges arising from the increased autonomy of AI systems in decision-making.
• Explore and propose governance frameworks for ensuring fairness, transparency, bias, and accountability in human/AI collaborative work.
• The influence of societal values on work practices, policies, and organizational culture, with a focus on sustainability and inclusivity.
• Strategies for fostering effective and sustainable human-AI collaboration in hybrid and virtual workplaces.
• Redefining roles and responsibilities in AI-integrated teams.
• Use cases, such as digital brainstorming agents, demonstrating the impact of human-AI interactions on team dynamics and creativity.
• The effects of AI integration on organizational structures and workforce development.
• Innovations in leadership and management practices to accommodate human-AI collaboration.
• Long-term implications of AI as a collaborative partner on business models and resilience.
• Work exploring emerging or future digital work practices centred on the interplay between humans and digital agencies.
• Algorithmic work and management and its implications for workers and organization.
• New forms of working and organizing enabled, transformed or substantially changed by specific new digital technologies (research focused on a particular technology affecting multiple work practices).
• Specific work configurations (e.g., digital nomadic, location-independent working and organizing) that is enabled by host of digital technologies (research focused on a particular work practice enabled by multiple digital technologies).
• Advancing theory of human-AI collaboration or the changing nature of work.
• Methodologies for studying the emergent scenarios and futures around human-AI collaboration or the changing nature of work.
• Critical or philosophical accounts of human-AI centred work.
• Research with substantial policy implications on human-AI work advancements
• Other types of conceptual, theoretical, methodological or philosophical contributions on the above topics.

Timeline

• August 15, 2025: Submissions due
• November 15, 2025: Notifications (submissions)
• March 1, 2026: Revisions due
• May 1, 2026: Notifications (revision 1)
• August 1, 2026: Second revision due
• October 1, 2026: Notifications (revision 2)
• December 1, 2026: Target publication
• Workshops for papers invited forward will be held at ICIS 2025 and online (for author teams not attending ICIS).