Citation :

Aisha Blessing, U.W.Ezinne, 2026. "A socio-technical analysis of how AI systems reshape managerial authority, professional ethics, and workplace culture ." International Journal of Community Empowerment & Society Administration [IJCESA]  Volume 3, Issue 1: 30-39.

Abstract :

The quick integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems into organizational environments is fundamentally reshaping managerial structures, professional norms and workplace cultures. AI is frequently interrogated from technological or economic angles; its broader socio-technical significance remains under-explored. By conducting a socio technical analysis of how AI systems transform managerial authority, reshuffle ethical logics, and rearrange cultural orderings in somatic assemblages pervading contemporary workplaces this study contributes to scholarship on ICT and work. The paper thus grounds AI in socio-technical systems theory, institutional theories, and actor-network perspectives to reconceptualize it not as toolset but as an organizational actor embedded in networks of human decision makers, policies, and institutional norms. As AI systems gain power, they influence the decision-making process at increasingly higher management levels, thus changing the traditional pecking order of authority, as shown by the analysis. Managers are shifting from being the primary decision-makers to just monitoring algorithmic outputs, which changes the nature of accountability and discretion. At the same time, AI is being deployed that raises complex ethical issues on transparency, bias, autonomy and responsibility. Professionals in diverse sectors find themselves facing tensions between algorithmic efficiencies and established ethical commitments that require new ethical frameworks and governance mechanisms. And more broadly, AI adoption radically transforms workplace culture through increased data-driven performance assessment, greater capacities for digital surveillance, and changes in communication and collaboration patterns. This study illustrates through a qualitative case analysis of multiple industries that AI-driven transformation manifests itself as neither simply technological nor social but rather the interplay between the two.

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Keywords :

Artificial Intelligence (AI); Socio-Technical Systems; Managerial Authority; Professional Ethics; Workplace Culture; Algorithmic Governance; Organizational Change; Digital Transformation; AI Ethics; Institutional Theory.