Abstract:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in project work; however, little is known about how project teams interpret and apply AI in everyday collaboration. This paper reports on an ongoing, developmental study examining how project actors make sense of AI in project teamwork. Existing project management research has largely focused on AI capabilities and anticipated performance benefits, offering limited insight into the interpretive processes through which AI becomes meaningful in project settings. This paper addresses this gap by adopting a sensemaking-as-process perspective to examine how project actors construct, negotiate, and provisionally stabilise meanings of AI in project teamwork. The paper develops a process-oriented conceptual model that theorises AI integration as an ongoing cycle of sensemaking shaped by contextual sources, team-level interpretive processes, emergent interpretations of AI, and implications for coordination, trust, collaboration, and innovation. The model is explicitly developmental and intended to guide qualitative empirical inquiry and subsequent theory refinement. The paper advances understanding of how AI comes to matter in project work and how project teams navigate technological transformation.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Project Experiences

Keywords: Project performance;Digitalisation, data, AI, etc;Approaches/Methodologies;Organisational Context;Project Work

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Prof Sukanlaya Sawang