Should Leaders Outsource Visionary Leadership to AI? The Effects of AI Vision Delivery and Perceived AI-Generated Vision Content on Follower Perceptions and Motivation

Abstract

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in leadership is debated—while some question its ability to replace human leaders, others argue that AI can help inspire followers. In this study, we integrate studies on human-AI interaction with the literatures on visionary leadership and social perception to examine the impact of outsourcing the creation and delivery of visions to AI. We propose that vision delivery by an AI avatar, compared to a human speaker, has a positive indirect effect on follower motivation through perceived leader competence but a negative indirect effect through perceived leader warmth. Moreover, we argue that these effects depend on followers' perceptions of who created the vision. Specifically, we propose that the positive indirect effect via perceived leader competence is stronger when followers believe the vision was created by AI rather than a human. Conversely, we argue that the negative indirect effect via perceived leader warmth is more strongly negative when followers believe a human leader outsourced the delivery of his or her vision to AI. We find support for our hypotheses in an experiment with 260 participants. Our research advances the understanding of both the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing visionary leadership to AI.