Two and a half Men - The Impact of HR-Analytics on Responsible Leadership

In the project "Two and a Half Men - The Impact of HR Analytics on Responsible Leadership", we investigate (1) why leaders take responsibility in the workplace and (2) how technologies (e.g., management algorithms) influence leadership and decision-making processes at the workplace.

There is increasing concern about the diverse scandals caused by unethical decisions and a lack of responsible leadership during the last decades (e.g., such as the Enron collapse). Surprisingly, the current knowledge about antecedents for responsible leadership is nevertheless spread thin across different research fields and is mainly theoretical in nature. Our previous research and interviews with practitioners have shown us that technology aggravates the issue by complicating leadership. Hence, in practice, leaders struggle to deploy technology in a responsible way.

In order to better understand responsible leadership, we have therefore structured and classified the existing knowledge from two previously separate strands of research and synthesized the findings with each other. In addition, we used existing interviews from the HR analytics context to create a preliminary framework of possible antecedents of responsible leadership for practice. The preliminary framework created will now be modified on the basis of semi-structured interviews with experts from particularly responsibility-relevant and technology-permeated contexts. In parallel, we will experimentally test the influence of individual antecedents and the impact of technology - especially management algorithms. The use of a mixed-methods approach allows us to develop a particularly deep understanding of responsible leadership and the impact of technology in order to generate scientific findings as well as practice-relevant recommendations. If you are interested in our project or the findings, please contact Alice Rickert.