Abstract
The past decade has seen digital transformation reach the top of many executive agendas (Alhassan and Soui, 2021; Mikalef and Gupta, 2021). Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays an integral part in nearly all digital strategies in organisations (Correani et al., 2020), leaving virtually no industry untouched by it (Agarwal et al., 2022). There is no doubt that the advent of AI is creating disruptive business opportunities and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, there is evidence to suggest that not all organisations are implementing AI strategically, nor adopting it to reach its full potential (Davenport, 2021; Holström, 2022). A gap exists in understanding the lag in organisational AI adoption.
Research conducted by the authors last year explored AI readiness and intention to adopt AI at an organisational level. Quantitative data was gathered through an online, structured survey. 237 non-executive managers in Australia provided their perceptions of organisational readiness to adopt AI in their professional setting. The empirical data presented in the current paper focuses on the organisational domain.
The research to date represents the first phase of a larger study aimed at informing executive leadership what is required to successfully navigate the complexities of an AI-driven firm. Based on our initial findings, we concluded that successful organisational AI readiness extends well beyond investment into AI technology. We now plan to delve deeper into this critical business issue, further investigating the organisational domains, AI knowledge, AI competence, and AI culture, and their relationship with AI adoption. During the session we will present our research findings to date, we would then welcome feedback from BAM participants on our future research plans: to guide our research approach and help prioritise elements of the study as it develops. Feedback received on the paper at the conference will help inform and refine our future research contributions.