Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management Full Paper Session - Wellbeing, Technostress and Responsible Leadership

Society-Centred Responsible Leadership: Governing Accountability in Algorithmic Organisations

HF

Hajar Fatorachian Leeds Beckett University

Abstract

Responsible leadership theory presumes identifiable moral agents capable of dialogical accountability and justificatory reasoning. Yet in algorithmically mediated organisations, decision authority is increasingly embedded within socio-technical infrastructures that partially redistribute agency and obscure decision logic. This paper demonstrates that responsible leadership becomes structurally strained under such conditions. We introduce Society-Centred Responsible Leadership (SRL), which reconceptualises leadership as infrastructural stewardship: the deliberate design, governance, and adaptive recalibration of algorithmic systems that shape stakeholder outcomes. Drawing on a theory-elaboration approach combining discourse analysis of corporate AI governance reports with illustrative analyses of algorithmic auditing and optimisation recalibration, we identify three structural tensions—agency–opacity, legitimacy–rhetoric, and stability–adaptability—that reconfigure leadership under algorithmic governance. We demonstrate that ethical accountability cannot be sustained through relational engagement alone; it must be institutionally embedded within diagnostic transparency, distributive auditing, and adaptive governance architectures. By reframing responsible leadership as socio-technical stewardship rather than solely individual moral orientation, this study reconstitutes responsible leadership theory for digitally mediated organisations.

Please choose your submission type

Full Paper

Primary Track

Human Resource Management

Keywords

Future of work, technology & Innovation

Published in BAM2026 Conference

Publisher X-CD Journal

Date of Conference September 7–11, 2026