Managing a ChatGPT-empowered workforce: Understanding its affordances and side effects

Abstract

Generative AI, particularly ChatGPT, creates new managerial concerns. This article addresses a crucial managerial challenge: While employees are including the tool as their private knowledge assistant in many aspects of their daily work, it is difficult for managers to see and understand the impact within their organization. There is more and more literature on what ChatGPT means for business, but we cannot say much as long as we are uninformed about its actual use. So, getting an insider’s perspective is needed to think about the consequences for organizations. The article is grounded in a qualitative study of employees’ experiences of interacting with ChatGPT among 50 early ChatGPT adopters. First, we show how employee-ChatGPT relations develop from private, experimental use into an integral part of knowledge work. Second, we identify six affordances: searching for information, brainstorming ideas, structuring content, writing a first draft, embellishing text, and proofing work. Further, we highlight three looming side effects of ChatGPT use that threaten knowledge ties, the quality of knowledge in organizations, and how work roles are configured. Accordingly, this article offers managers guidance in managing a ChatGPT-empowered workforce in a way that aims to mitigate these side effects while harnessing opportunities.