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ORG0010.1177/1350508419855714OrganizationBader and Kaiser

Special Issue Article

Organization
1­–18
Algorithmic decision-making? © The Author(s) 2019
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supported by artificial intelligence

Verena Bader and Stephan Kaiser

Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany

Abstract
Artificial intelligence can provide organizations with prescriptive options for decision-making. Based
on the notions of algorithmic decision-making and user involvement, we assess the role of artificial
intelligence in workplace decisions. Using a case study on the implementation and use of cognitive
software in a telecommunications company, we address how actors can become distanced from or
remain involved in decision-making. Our results show that humans are increasingly detached from
decision-making spatially as well as temporally and in terms of rational distancing and cognitive
displacement. At the same time, they remain attached to decision-making because of accidental
and infrastructural proximity, imposed engagement, and affective adhesion. When human and
algorithmic intelligence become unbalanced in regard to humans’ attachment to decision-making,
three performative effects result: deferred decisions, workarounds, and (data) manipulations. We
conceptualize the user interface that presents decisions to humans as a mediator between human
detachment and attachment and, thus, between algorithmic and humans’ decisions. These findings
contrast the traditional view of automated media as diminishing user involvement and have useful
implications for research on artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making in organizations.

Keywords
Algorithmic and human-based intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, artificial intelligence,
interface, workplace decisions

Introduction
Algorithmic decision-making refers to the automation of decisions and is considered as a form of
remote control and standardization of routinized workplace decisions (Möhlmann and Zalmanson,

Corresponding author:
Verena Bader, School of Economics and Management, Bundeswehr University Munich, Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39,
85579 Neubiberg, Germany.
Email: [email protected]
2 Organization 00(0)

2017). Algorithmically managed workers become interpreters of condensed results of complex

algorithmic analyses presented via simplistic user interfaces so that they can make good decisions
(Constantiou and Kallinikos, 2015; LaValle et al., 2011; Sharma et al., 2014). Algorithms have
gained importance in decision-making (Clark et al., 2007), although decision-making is rooted in
the assumption that decisions rely on human competencies like knowledge and human experience
(Newell and Marabelli, 2015; Shollo and Galliers, 2016). The function of algorithms in decision-
making has moved from descriptive to predictive modes of data analytics and to the prescription of
best options for actions in operational and strategic domains (Van der Vlist, 2016). In this context,
learning algorithms, often referred to as artificial intelligence (AI) or ‘cognitive systems’ (Helbing,
2019), are finding their way into workplace decisions. Researchers often consider AI in workplace
decisions as an ‘automation of data analysis’ (Helbing et al., 2019: 74), where algorithms based on
machine learning improve decision-making processes over time without human intervention,
resulting in humans’ losing control of their performance (Günther et al., 2017).
When users are confronted with opaque algorithmic decisions, the boundary between human and
algorithmic intelligence blurs (e.g. Günther et al., 2017), leading to a debate about which of the two
should have control over decision-making and which should have power over the other (Cramer and
Fuller, 2008). The separate view of humans and AI in these considerations is based on the idea that
AI is a reflection of human intelligence (Goffey, 2008). Scholars in domains like information systems
and organization studies (e.g. Shaikh and Vaast, 2016) as well as media studies (Gillespie, 2014) have
reviewed this separated perspective to integrate human intelligence and algorithmic intelligence into
work practices (e.g. Günther et al., 2017; Lichtenthaler, 2018). From this perspective, humans and
algorithms form an assemblage in which the components of their differing origins and natures are put
together and relationships between them are established (DeLanda, 2016). In this context, scholars
have asked for research on the ‘active capacity of [algorithms] to shape or manipulate the things or
people with which they come into contact’ (e.g. Fuller and Goffey, 2012: 5). While this understanding
suggests that algorithms are taking over decisions in organizations, the actual role of AI in workplace
decisions and in the ongoing involvement of humans in decision-making lacks clarity. Therefore, our
study examines how users deal with algorithmic decision-making, how the user interface influences
their ongoing involvement in decision-making, and how AI affects their decisions.
Building on extant work in media studies, our empirical case study of the implementation of
cognitive software in a large telecommunications provider’s call center contributes to research on
AI and algorithmic decision-making in organizations. Using a media theoretical notion of user
involvement in algorithmic decisions, we go beyond the opposing views of attachment and detach-
ment (Latour, 1999) to show that AI has a dual role in workplace decisions when users interact with
it (Orlikowski, 2007) and must master both their detachment from and their attachment to deci-
sions. Thus, the interface that presents algorithmic decisions to humans mediates both low and high
levels of human involvement in decision-making. More concretely, our study sheds light on how
human interaction with AI functionalities detaches them from decision-making in terms of spatial
and temporal separation, rational distancing as well as cognitive displacement of humans from
decisions. Despite algorithmic influence, humans remain attached to decision-making because of
accidental and infrastructural proximity, imposed engagement that is due to their unique access to
context information, and their affections and emotions. A media theoretical approach helps to
explain the performance effects of algorithmic work through our empirical data that suggest nega-
tive consequences when humans’ attachment to decisions in the context of algorithmic decision-
making is too strong. These negative consequences manifest in deferred decisions, workarounds,
and (data) manipulations.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows. First, we describe the study’s research
frame, which is determined by the current knowledge in algorithmic decision-making and the
Bader and Kaiser 3

notion of user involvement in media theory. Then we present our research design, outlining the
case study’s empirical setting and our methodological approach to data collection and analysis.
Next, we illustrate the findings of our empirical case study on the implementation of cognitive
software in a call center. Based on these findings, we present our framework for the role of AI in
workplace decisions and discuss our contribution to the literatures of digital media and organiza-
tion studies. Finally, we describe how our framework can inform future research.

Algorithmic decision-making and human involvement

The basic conceptualization of a decision is that there is an ‘individual decision maker facing a
choice involving uncertainty about outcomes’ (Peterson, 2017: 9). Putting the individual decision-
maker at the center of decision-making is the most intuitive approach to studying algorithmic
decision-making in organizations (e.g. Davenport, 2013), where the individual is the recipient of
automated decisions or recommendations. For instance, operative decision-makers who provide
IT-enabled services (Chae, 2014), like bank assistants who decide on loan approvals or call center
agents who decide what sales offers to make, are confronted with predetermined decision options
via simplified dashboards and user interfaces. In the background, self-learning algorithms work on
large data sets and ‘generate responses, classifications, or dynamic predictions that resemble those
of a knowledge worker’ (Faraj et al., 2018: 62) based on statistical measures, computations, and
machine learning for routine decisions.
In general, the core function of business intelligence software is the algorithmic-based monitor-
ing, measurement, and management of business performance (Clark et al., 2007). Algorithmic
decision-making refers to the application of computational algorithms to solve a well-defined
problem a priori. However, with the application of AI and learning algorithms and with the deci-
sion-making procedures advancing and changing automatically over time, the algorithmic output’s
accountability is questionable (Günther et al., 2017; Van der Vlist, 2016). In addition, predictive
models that use both historical and real-time data to forecast the likelihood of specific outcomes
have increasingly replaced the historical data that provided comprehensive descriptive information
as a basis for human decision-making. In fact, algorithmic decision-making is advancing toward
prescriptive data analytics by providing options for the best decisions (Van der Vlist, 2016).
In light of these technological advancements, algorithmic decision-making is being increasingly
critically judged in contemporary organization research (Davenport, 2013; Introna, 2016; Newell
and Marabelli, 2015; Zarsky, 2016). Research has suggested that humans who are confronted with
routine decisions are distanced from decision-making when algorithms and AI are incorporated
into the decision-making process since they lose track of the data sources, collection methods, data
analysis, and information processing that serve as the immediate basis for knowledge and decision-
making (Shollo and Kautz, 2010). In contrast to human decision-making, which is usually based
on experience, intuition, and context (Klein, 2017), algorithmic decisions are based on statistical
models so they can present options for decisions faster, more objectively, and more accurately
(Chen et al., 2018; Jung et al., 2018). Despite the involvement of system designers and program-
mers, as Gillespie (2014: 170, referring to Winner, 1977) highlighted, the core principle of algo-
rithms is that they ‘are designed to be–and prized for being–functionally automatic, to act when
triggered without any regular human intervention or oversight’.
Zarsky (2016) saw this automation and opacity as central properties of algorithms, which dis-
tance humans from the decision. Although automation is positively connoted in terms of effi-
ciency, the resulting simplicity and reduced uncertainty in decision-making (Orlikowski and
Scott, 2014) may also have devastating effects when algorithms focus on narrow problems with-
out taking contextual factors into account (Marabelli et al., 2018). Among these potentially
4 Organization 00(0)

negative consequences are reduced information because of oversimplification (Orlikowski and

Scott, 2014), inaccuracy (McFarland and McFarland, 2015), loss of information privacy (Belanger
et al., 2002), a loss of fairness (Zarsky, 2016), increasing control and surveillance (Anteby and
Chan, 2018), and other ethical issues (e.g. Ananny, 2016).
Given these issues, current research in algorithmic decision-making has seen the character-
istics of algorithms and their negative consequences on individual decision-making as prob-
lematic. As Introna (2016) stated, we lose track of the active capacity of algorithms since their
work is ‘subsumed in daily practices’ (p. 17). For this reason, a growing number of studies
have considered AI-supported work practices as assemblages of human and algorithmic intel-
ligence that either synthesize and combine their unique competencies and enhance perfor-
mance through a division of labor, or pit human intelligence against algorithmic intelligence,
where one rules out the other during the decision-making process (e.g. Günther et al., 2017;
Lichtenthaler, 2018).
In such an assemblage of human and algorithmic intelligence, the user takes on an active part in
what the medium becomes (Brunton and Coleman, 2014; Gitelman, 2006; Oudshoorn and Pinch,
2003). User involvement has been referred to primarily as the intensity with which the user is cog-
nitively and emotionally included in producing the medium’s content (Greenwood, 2008; Krugman,
1971; McLuhan, 1994). In this context, Borche and Lange (2017) analyzed users’ management of
their emotional ‘attachment’ when the decision-maker in high-frequency trading changed from
human traders to algorithms. Attachment refers to ‘what we hold to and what holds us’ (Hennion,
2017b: 71) and, thus, ‘our ways of both making and being made by the relationships and the objects
that hold us together’ (Hennion, 2017a: 118). The notion of attachment is frequently contrasted
with its opposite, detachment. Whether one is attached or detached from an object lies in whether
one is bound to or free from it in terms of one’s ability to act (Latour, 1999). Similarly, Seaver
(2017: 310 f.) emphasized ‘the relatedness of attachment and mediation’ in referring to Hennion
(2015), and Callon’s (1984) idea of interessement or how ‘various entities become tied up in each
other’ (Seaver, 2017: 310).
If algorithmic decision-making is an assemblage of human and algorithmic intelligence, the
user interface serves as a mediator of attachments and detachments, as it presents the algorith-
mic decision to the human. Different types of media and their user interfaces require more or
less user involvement (Cramer and Fuller, 2008). While interfaces are all boundaries that ‘link
software and hardware to each other and to their human users or other sources of data’ (Cramer
and Fuller, 2008: 149), the central interface that is involved on the work-practice level is the
user interface between the software and the final user, presented in the shape of symbols and
buttons on the computer screen. Central to this conceptualization of the user interface as media-
tor is its requiring human competencies and cognition to make sense of the content (Sharma
et al., 2014). Thus, the user interface, shaped by programmers (Downey, 2014), provides and
presents ‘automated decisions’, thereby mediating how actors are attached to or detached from
decisions.
However, Livingstone (2014: 241) emphasized the necessity of considering ‘the activities of
users in context’ such that the roles of the surrounding media, including organizational factors like
hierarchies, goals, and power relationships, are considered in the decision process (Mackenzie,
2006, 2013; Weich and Othmer, 2016). This extended view of users and their work in context also
resonates in Hennion’s (2015) description of how attachments are supported by networks of
humans and objects (Seaver, 2017). Therefore, and similar to the notion of distributed decision
systems (Schneeweiss, 2012), we refer to algorithmic decision-making as a form of joint problem-
solving and an assemblage of humans and algorithms that the user interface mediates. Based on
this, we argue that, to assess the role of AI in workplace decisions, one must see algorithmic
Bader and Kaiser 5

Figure 1.  The interface mediator of human involvement in algorithmic decision-making.

decision-­making as an assemblage of human actors and algorithms mediated by the user interface
(Figure 1). This mediation evokes the balance or imbalance between low user involvement, which
means human detachment from the decision, and high user involvement, which means human
attachment to the decision.

Methods
Empirical setting: introduction of cognitive software in a call center
Studying human involvement in algorithmic decision-making on a practice level (Günther et al.,
2017) requires in-depth qualitative data that allow the exploration of ‘technologies-in-use’ (e.g.
Gherardi, 2012: 79). We assess the introduction of software and affective user interactions (Bracha
and Brown, 2012) using a case-study research design that can help to explain complex scenarios
(Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2013). Fieldwork is commonly used as a qualitative approach to assessing
technologies-in-use and material arrangements (Gherardi, 2012) and to observing the use of soft-
ware ‘in [a] natural setting’ (Eisenhardt and Bourgeois, 1988).
This article presents research that was part of a broader study on algorithms’ capacity to act.
Part of that study was investigating the use of decision-support software in the call center of a
large cable operator that has about 1500 employees and about 1.3 million customers. In 2005,
the firm was acquired by an internationally operating group and, during the course of several
group-wide software standardization processes, a new cognitive system, IBM Interact, was
launched in a call center. Call centers provide a relevant empirical context, as the agents’ tradi-
tional tasks have considerable potential for automation, so they are among the first empirical
settings in which the implementation of AI and actors’ reactions to it can be analyzed. IBM
Interact is a cognitive system that operates in a prescriptive way (Van der Vlist, 2016) by ana-
lyzing historical and real-time customer data over time and providing its users, the call center
agents in this case, with predetermined and increasingly well-suited sales options for the cus-
tomer who is on the line. During the phone conversation with the customer, the call center agent
has to react and make decisions on what offer is the best for the company. Our analysis focuses
on this company part of the sales negotiation when the call center agents’ decisions were newly
supported by AI.
Before IBM Interact’s implementation, call center agents assessed a customer’s needs using a
‘manual demand analysis’ that was conducted by asking the customer for information or manually
gathering the information from various internal databases. The customer demand analysis was usu-
ally geared to selling a product, and the procedure followed a strict protocol on which the agents
6 Organization 00(0)

were well trained during their onboarding phase and afterward. While the customer demand analy-
sis and customer interactions were scripted to make as many sales as possible, IBM Interact was
based on predictive modeling that sought to make not only the highest-priced but also the most
suitable offer to the customer. This predictive modeling considered internal and external data like
the customer’s purchasing and surfing behavior, age, and residency and the marketing and sales
departments’ requirements to predict the likelihood of customer churn and promote customized
service and individualized offers. Thus, with the implementation of this software, the quantity-
focused manual demand analysis was succeeded by a quality-focused, algorithm-based demand
analysis. By automating the demand analysis, the decision about what to offer the client was pre-
sented to the agent via the user interface of IBM Interact, a simple display that gave the agent little
information about how the decision was made, as the agent was not involved in the data collection
and analysis.
Our analysis considered the interplay between human and algorithmic intelligence and how
human involvement in decisions played out when the agents’ decisions were succeeded by choices
presented via IBM Interact’s user interface.

Data collection and analysis

Assessing attachment and detachment requires ‘social inquiries made on sensitive matters and
things that count for people’ (Hennion, 2017a: 118). To get a sense of the call center workers’
attachment to decisions, we applied the commonly used qualitative methods of conducting inter-
views, making observations, and doing documentary research. We conducted 28 semi-structured
interviews with employees from the company (managers, team leaders, supervisors, trainers, and
agents), 15 of which focused exclusively on users’ interactions with the IBM Interact in the call
center division. Among the interview partners also were members of the IT, marketing intelligence,
sales, customer care, and training departments who were involved in the design and implementa-
tions of the software. In particular, we asked questions about how the software afforded their indi-
vidual goals; how their roles, practices, and decisions changed; and how they simultaneously use
other technologies. In addition to the interview material, we collected observational data on tech-
nologies-in-use (Gherardi, 2012) in the form of written memos while listening to live calls in the
call center and observing how agents interacted with the IBM Interact software. We also collected
supplementary data such as intranet entries, emails on IBM Interact, and visual data in the call
center, which we found was necessary to understand the roles of the media and the material
surroundings.
We analyzed the interview, observation, and documentary data we collected using Nvivo soft-
ware and a theory-elaboration approach, which is in line with case study research (Eisenhardt,
1989). We derived our theory from the data and introduced findings from the literature iteratively
during the research process (Eisenhardt, 1989). After the first few interviews, as concepts emerged,
we refined our qualitative coding system, modified a few questions in the interview guide, added
others (e.g. questions on the workplace atmosphere), and focused on systems the interviewees
mentioned to broaden and deepen our conceptualizations. In particular, we elaborated our coding
scheme as we noticed that the agents switched between either conducting the manual demand
analysis, where they remained highly involved with the decision (1), or adhering to the algorithmic
decision where they withdrew their involvement with the decision (2). Doing so, we included the
subtle constituents of detachment and low user involvement as well as attachment and high user
involvement. We also refined our codes on the actual effects on the decision-making of the new
assemblage. Table 1 presents an overview of our data structure.
Bader and Kaiser 7

Table 1.  Data structure.

Empirical themes Core concepts Aggregate dimensions

Spatial and temporal separation Low human involvement Detachment from decisions
Rational distancing
Cognitive displacement
Accidental and infrastructural proximity High human involvement Attachment to decisions
Imposed engagement
Affective adhesion
Deferred decisions Unbalanced human Attachments’ performative
Workarounds involvement effects
Manipulations

Findings
This section assesses the involvement of human actors in algorithmic decision-making and dis-
cusses the decision situations the call center agents faced.

Detachment of the call center agent from the offer decision

In the call center, algorithmic decisions are presented to the agents via IBM Interact’s interface.
The interface’s mediation between the algorithm and the agent in the form of the ‘best’ decision
leads one to ask whether the decision is already made before the agent participates. We address this
question in the next section, where we describe how the agents coped with the decisions presented.
However, first, we elaborate on the agents’ detachment from the decisions, that is, how the agents
became committed to the algorithmic decisions. This detachment from decision-making found
expression in spatial, temporal, rational, and cognitive dimensions.

Spatial and temporal separation.  IBM Interact accesses external customer data and performs predic-
tive modeling. External actors feed data into this database in various ways and at various times. For
instance, the marketing department wanted to drive high-priced products; a customer started to
play video games intensely and his or her real-time clicks on the webpage were fed back as data
from the customer’s home to IBM Interact (Head of Marketing Intelligence Department, Interview
21); internal databases included the customers’ historical purchasing behavior. Thus, call center
agents were confronted with prescriptive algorithmic decisions made from data they would not
otherwise have had access to. These functionalities meshed with the fast-response environment in
the inbound call center, which takes customers’ calls about administrative or technical problems,
so agents do not have time to prepare but must serve the customer’s concern while interacting with
him or her to sell a product. Thus, with the software’s decision based on internal and historical data
and external and foresight data to which the agents do not have access, agents are spatially and
temporally separated from the basis of the decision:

At that moment, you need to be able to identify what is now the next best action that we can offer this
customer, given everything we know about this customer and his past purchase behavior. […] Before
[IBM Interact], the agents were drilled to try to make a sale […] in every single call, never mind what the
customer’s situation is, so there are customers who ordered a product last Thursday and they are calling in
today asking, ‘Hey, where is my stuff?’ [and], of course, there is no way that you have the chance to sell
something to this customer, because he is still waiting […] for his first product. Now, with [IBM Interact],
8 Organization 00(0)

we are able to filter those customer groups out. […] Then, based on that segmentation and all the customer
insights we have of this customer, we can offer the agents what we call the next best action. (Head of
Marketing Intelligence Department, Interview 21)

Rational distancing. The agent has at least two roles that are expressed in the human-material
arrangement of the selling situation: the agent’s interaction with IBM Interact’s user interface,
which presents the best offers for the next customer in line, and the interaction with the customer
through the phone headset that links the agent to the customer, who is elsewhere. The elements of
this triangle arrangement among IBM Interact’s interface, the agent, and the customer jointly build
the situation in which decisions concerning what the agent offers and what the customer buys are
made based on specific goals and rationalities. Therefore, the interface is only the surface of the
rational-instrumental goals (i.e. performance targets) of management and the marketing and sales
department. IBM Interact is configured to allow the organization to make a shift toward customer
service and to change the agents’ focus to ‘quality versus quantity’ and ‘more value than volume’
(Manager, Interview 25), but the agents were still focused on the number of sales as the most
important performance indicator, a view that a manager described as ‘conditioned’ (Manager,
Interview 25). The third perspective was that of the customer, who had his or her own reasons to
act in the situation. In this arrangement of different and even conflicting rationalities, the agent
became rationally distanced, not least because the data that built the basis for the algorithmic deci-
sion was unavailable to the agent. Hence, we refer to rational distancing, where the human decision
differs from what the interface presents and the opaque algorithmic decision instruction and the
human’s decision logic diverge.

Cognitive displacement. Agents adhered to the algorithmic decisions if they perceived a special

cognitive sophistication or if IBM Interact provided better service in terms of efficiency, accuracy,
and speed. A manager highlighted the premade decisions as a help because ‘all those linked logics
that are saved in [IBM Interact] are an enormous relief for the employee’ (Interview 25). The ben-
efit of this sophistication especially applied to low performers among the agents, who could
improve their skills with the selling arguments and information on the IBM Interact interface that
appeared next to every offer. One of these agents praised the cognitive advantage gained with the
help of IBM Interact ‘because it is much more spontaneous for me to approach the customer when
I see [its interface] because you already have specific information’ (Interview 23).
The marketing and sales departments also integrated incentives into the system for high per-
formers. For instance, IBM Interact incorporates special loyalty offers with high selling potential
that agents could not make otherwise. As the Sales and Customer Operations Release Manager
explained, ‘If a seller is clever, he will at least open it and look to see ‘can I give the customer
this offer?’’ (Interview 27). In this case, cognitive displacement was a form of detachment that
led to the need for the unique algorithmic competencies that allowed the system to make these
special offers.
In sum, our findings show three dimensions of human detachment from algorithmic decisions:
First, IBM Interact had exclusive access to external and forecast data and to the constant stream of
data produced by customer decisions that were translated back to the system through customers’
clicks. Lacking these competencies, the agent became spatially and temporally separated from the
decision. Second, the interface sometimes presented simplistic results of complex decisions made
in a black box that did not coincide with the agent’s own decision logic. These conflicting rationali-
ties led to agents’ rational distancing since they could not track the algorithmic decision logic they
had to accept. Third, the user interface prescribed the ‘next best action’ to the agents, vesting them
Bader and Kaiser 9

with artificial competencies like efficiency and accuracy that are badly needed in the context of a
call center but that cognitively displaced the agents from decisions.

Attachments of the call center agent to the offer decision

While call center agents were increasingly distanced from decision-making, they also simultane-
ously became highly attached to the decisions. The next sections describe these attachments and
how agents intervened to refuse the algorithmic decision. This attachment sometimes happened by
accident, was determined by the technical infrastructure, or materialized in the form of supervisors’
commands or as affections and emotions.

Accidental and infrastructural proximity.  When the agents were first introduced to IBM Interact, they
had no use for it. The user interface’ design did not support the work routines that had been deter-
mined by their individual procedures when they used manual demand analysis, so they often (unin-
tentionally) failed to feed data—or even fed incorrect data—into the system. A manager who
worked at the intersection between the IT department and sales and customer relations described
the outcome of the poorly recorded agent–customer interactions that initially biased the database
on which IBM Interact based its decisions: ‘[The interaction] is only recorded when the agent
presses “save.” Well, if you forget that, of course, nothing is recorded’ (Sales & Customer Opera-
tions-Release-Manager, Interview 27). Agents were also attached to their own decision-making
because of infrastructural and material conditions, the most obvious of which was the agent’s role
as a user of multiple media. For example, the agent filtered and checked IBM Interact’s user inter-
face when he or she was talking to the customer, as biases in the database resulted in IBM Interact’s
proposing offers that the agent understood as not applicable when he or she engaged more fully
with the customer and received more information on which to base a decision. IBM Interact’s
biases might be based on no data (e.g. when the customer gets service from another telecommuni-
cations provider) or flawed data (e.g. when customers make accidental clicks on the webpage or
someone else uses the hardware), in which case the interface might present five Internet offers even
though the customer said at the beginning of the conversation that he had an Internet contract with
another company (Interviewee 21). In such cases, the agent filtered out all Internet-related offers
from IBM Interact. Therefore, accidental and infrastructural proximity (e.g. produced through the
telephone) was another reason for agents to intervene in algorithmic decisions when the interface’s
design did not support their routine work habits or when other surrounding media stimulated sen-
sual and cognitive engagement.

Imposed engagement.  In contrast to attachment situations, where agents intervened in the decision
process on their own, in some situations agents were commanded to be attached to decisions.
While managers and developers of IBM Interact urged the agents to adhere strictly to the soft-
ware’s proposals (Head of Marketing Intelligence, Interview 21; Manager, Interview 25), team
leaders allowed or even instructed the agents to ignore IBM Interact when they felt that their own
analysis was better. In one case, a team leader met his team in a private cubicle, where he instructed
them to ignore IBM Interact entirely so that the team could meet its sales goals (memo from an
informal conversation with a Call Center Agent). We refer to this form of forced attachment that is
due to organizational conditions as imposed engagement.

Affective adhesion.  Agents were also attached to decisions by their emotions. Agents had been con-
stantly informed of their individual sales numbers and key performance indicators (KPIs) via emails,
monitors, rankings, and tournaments (Team Leader, Interview 7) and had been ‘conditioned over
10 Organization 00(0)

years’ (Manager, Interview 25) to focus on their sales in drill sessions and private briefings (Call
Center Agents, Interviews 14, 15, 17). In contrast to this omnipresent selling focus, the aim of IBM
Interact was to provide the agent with the best solution for the customer on the line, including the
option not to make an offer at all. Especially when IBM Interact advised the agent not to make an
offer, such as when it would have been disadvantageous to their individual or team goals, the agent’s
emotions sometimes came into play. As a supervisor described it:

In the beginning, we said you must not make an offer if [IBM Interact] tells you not to make an offer, but
the problem is that selling is a goal for them. They must sell. Well, that means, if they can record a sale in
[…], our selling-tool, […] then it is a sale for them. The employees won’t let a tool ruin their sales. I
understand that. It is really hard. They are getting pushed. […] They’re under pressure to make sales, and
if a tool says you must not sell, but you could make a sale, then the employee, of course, makes the sale
[…] because he wants to reach his goals. He wants to have his commission. He just wants to be good.
(Interview 15)

Affective attachment is also closely linked to a managerial narrative about IBM Interact as a
tool that will take over the agents’ work. Using the same narrative, agents refused to use IBM
Interact and switched to the manual customer-demand analysis because they wanted to sell them-
selves as a matter of ‘professional ethos’ (Manager, Interview 25). These empirical examples show
that both the need and the wish to use unique human competencies were forms of affective adhe-
sion where agents held on to their decisions.

Attachments’ performative effects

Our findings suggest an unbalanced involvement of the agents in decisions, which, conscious or
not, led to negative impacts on their performance. One consequence was that agents simply could
not make decisions or deferred them, but agents also worked around IBM Interact and manipulated
how it functioned.

Deferred decisions.  In some cases, the conflicting rationalities among the goals of IBM Interact,
customer, managers and team leaders, and agents brought the agents into conflicting situations that
they could not resolve themselves, so they either refused to take calls or deferred decisions during
the phone conversation instead of asking the team leader what to do. One supervisor, who was a
key user of IBM Interact, told that the agents could ‘wait a bit longer to accept the call’ or ‘switch
to AUX’ (Supervisor, Interview 15), a management control system that counts the time agents are
logged off the coordination system during, for instance, meetings or coaching sessions.

Workarounds.  When agents had access to the tools they had used previously for the manual demand
analyses process, they often switched to these tools. For instance, one agent complied with IBM
Interact if its decision coincided with the agent’s personal goal of making three sales per day. If she
had already sold three items and IBM Interact still demanded a sale, the agent delayed accepting
the next call or used an older system that was still accessible. However, when she decided to work
around IBM Interact, she still documented her decision by clicking the ‘save’ button, thus feeding
information about the customer interaction to IBM Interact (Call Center Agent, Interview 22).

Manipulation.  Although the rigidity of the work environment was frequently compared to the mili-
tary, the tools that were available to the agents gave them opportunities to cheat and manipulate the
system: ‘These are all ways you can cheat as an employee. But apart from that, the numbers are
right’ (Supervisor, Interview 15).
Bader and Kaiser 11

One agent described her own sales goals as conflicting with IBM Interact’s instruction not to
sell a product:

Those from the project feel hoaxed because they work and work and sweat because IBM Interact doesn’t
work how it should work. I manipulate the numbers because I say, ‘Yes, okay, but what [IBM Interact] says
doesn’t interest me’. I manipulate the numbers, but if it is obvious to me that this customer will call in the
next two or three months because their sixteen-year-old daughter says she wants to see this program, I
would miss my sale otherwise. (Interview 16)

Clearly, individual call center agents were involved in and committed to decision-making in
spite of the system’s algorithmic propositions. We found their attachment to decisions took three
forms: accidental and infrastructural proximity, a form of materiality-driven attachment; imposed
engagement, where agents were forced to make decisions in reaction to organizational conditions;
and affective adhesion, which was driven primarily by emotions. Our findings also reveal the per-
formative effects of a lack of balance between human and algorithmic involvement, where human
attachment resulted in deferred decisions, workarounds, and manipulation.

Discussion
Organization and media studies’ research on the work of algorithms has captured algorithmic deci-
sion-making from a critical perspective as an approach to automatic management that dictates
decisions to humans (Beer, 2017; Gillespie, 2012, 2014; Introna, 2016; Newell and Marabelli,
2015). However, questions concerning how workers deal with algorithmic decision-making, how
the user interface influences their ongoing human involvement, and how workplace decisions are
affected by AI, have remained unanswered. Our study addresses these questions by examining the
ongoing human involvement in AI-supported workplace decisions. Taking a media-theoretical per-
spective, we analyze human decision-makers’ confrontations with the essence of the algorithmic
decision via the user interface and show that AI has a dual role in workplace decisions by creating
both human attachment to and detachment from decisions, which result from both high and low
levels of human involvement in interactions with IBM Interact’s user interface. On one hand, the
user interface evokes low human involvement, increasingly detaching the human decision-maker
from decision-making in the form of spatial and temporal separation, rational distancing, and cog-
nitive displacement. On the other hand, the decisions presented via the interface sometimes also
lead to a high degree of human involvement. Therefore, our findings suggest a simultaneous attach-
ment to and detachment from the decisions brought about the functionalities of AI. We identified
accidental and infrastructural proximity to decisions as a materiality-driven form of attachment and
revealed the significance of contextual factors that only humans can take into account. The third
form of human attachment to decisions, affective adhesion, is emotion-driven. Finally, our findings
suggest that a lack of balanced involvement of humans in decisions has negative performative
effects because of deferred decisions, workarounds, and manipulations.
Figure 2 presents a framework that summarizes this dual role of AI in workplace decisions, a
role that simultaneously evokes humans’ detachment from and attachment to decisions, which the
users master situationally.
The framework contributes to the human-intelligence versus algorithmic-intelligence debate on
the workplace level (Günther et al., 2017). Discourse on algorithmic decision-making frequently
points to superior software characteristics like machine learning and to problems like algorithmic
opacity (e.g. Zarsky, 2016). However, we argue that, depending on the user interface, AI detaches
humans from decisions while at the same time encouraging their attachment.
12 Organization 00(0)

Figure 2.  The role of the user interface in algorithmic intelligence supported workplace decisions.

The framework speaks for a dual view of the superior side and the ‘dark side’ (e.g. Marabelli
et al., 2018) of AI functionalities, which are black boxes for most users. First, our findings suggest
that, with the application of algorithmic decision-making on the worker level, the software’s func-
tionalities, such as its access to external data and predictive modeling, can generate spatial and
temporal separation, rational distancing, and cognitive displacement as forms of humans’ detach-
ment from its decisions, increasing humans’ reliance on algorithmic decisions (e.g. Fuller and
Goffey, 2012). This argument is supported in previous research that has suggested that algorithms
gain control over humans’ decisions and actions (Barocas et al., 2013), albeit on a theoretical level
(e.g. Abbasi et al., 2016). The extant research, then, gains empirical grounding with our study.
Second, our analysis shows that the software’s advanced functionalities and its opaque decision
logic can also lead to users’ strong engagement with the decision, whether because of infrastruc-
tural proximity, imposed engagement, or affective adhesion. Our findings suggest that, although
the software lacks the ability to consider contextual factors, its superior functionalities, such as
access to external data and predictive modeling, attach humans to decisions. Thus, humans decide
differently than algorithms do since humans cannot reconstruct the algorithms’ decision logic. We
find that this unbalanced human involvement results in negative outcomes like deferred decisions,
workarounds, and manipulations. Thus, we go beyond studies on algorithmic decision-making that
treat the neglect of contextual factors as a major hazard (e.g. Marabelli et al., 2018) and reveal the
Bader and Kaiser 13

ambivalent character of algorithms that is determined by both human autonomy and human
dependency.
Research has often pointed to the potential of automated data analysis and decisions (Helbing,
2019), treating algorithmic decisions as disclosed units (e.g. Dewett and Jones, 2001) that facilitate
remote managerial control (Bailey et al., 2012). In contrast, we conceptualize algorithmic decision-
making as an assemblage (DeLanda, 2016) of algorithms and humans (Lichtenthaler, 2018). In
doing so, we first refine the frequent classification of users as either being free (detached) or bound
(attached) to specific technologies (Latour, 1999) and show that a user interface that presents algo-
rithmic decisions provokes human detachments as well as attachments. In contrast to previous
analyses of the subject in algorithmic decision-making (Borche and Lange, 2017) and attachments,
we set the interface as a mediator in users’ involvement.
Therefore, we address Latour’s (1999) call for researchers to look beyond the mere opposition
of attachment and detachment by finding more subtle distinctions in their components. We respond
to this call by identifying the constitutive elements of attachments and detachments. The sophisti-
cated software functionalities result in low user involvement in terms of spatial and temporal sepa-
ration, rational distancing, and cognitive displacement. At the same time, the interface’s simplicity
evokes individuals’ active involvement and scrutiny when it activates human senses and discern-
ment related to decisions, especially if other media (e.g. the telephone) in the environment or
prevalent organizational conditions provoke human attachment to themselves. In addition, the
findings that relate to other media in the environment suggest that, in response to the introduction
of a new technology to be used by employees (e.g. Orlikowski, 2000), the extant media can deter-
mine the extent to which the new technology plays a role in decisions.
Our findings that are based on the idea of assemblage also extend existing scholarly work on
managerial control. Research in this field has analyzed unintended uses or ‘drift’ of new manage-
ment systems (e.g. Ciborra and Hanseth, 2000), although it neglects the role of technologies as
carriers of rationality (Bader and Kaiser, 2017; Cabantous and Gond, 2011). In pursuing our notion
of rational distancing, we examine how the user interface builds a site on which decision-makers
with different and sometimes opposing decision rationalities meet. Hence, similar to existing work
that has debated the various knowledge groups involved in using analytics (Pachidi et al., 2014),
we add to the drift debate information regarding how unintended uses unfold if decision logics do
not coincide and/or are not transparent to the human decision-maker.
Our third contribution addresses the literature on the relationship of algorithms to human prac-
tices, those practices’ reaction to the algorithms (Gillespie, 2014), and the algorithms’ relevance to
social outcomes (Beer, 2017; Newell and Marabelli, 2015). The results of our empirical investigation
emphasize how learning algorithms depend on humans, so our study joins those of researchers (e.g.
Suchman, 2014) who have highlighted the simultaneous making and using of data and have agreed
that the human-algorithmic interaction is more important in understanding the implications of algo-
rithms at work than are algorithms on their own (Couldry, 2012; Lowrie, 2017; Orlikowski, 2007;
Wegner, 1997). We enlarge this perspective through our empirical data and shed light on how human-
algorithmic interactions in the workplace affect organizational processes (Yoo et al., 2012).
Specifically, we find that users face the challenge of situationally mastering their detachment and
attachment, as an unbalanced involvement of humans in algorithmic decision-making results in
deferred decisions, workarounds, and manipulations. Earlier work on human manipulations as a
response to algorithms has highlighted how actors overly engage with algorithms by orienting their
actions to their suppositions about the algorithms’ computations to make themselves more recogniz-
able (e.g. Gillespie, 2017). In contrast to this over-engagement and identification with algorithms, we
find that, if humans are under-engaged with algorithms—that is, if they are disproportionally detached
14 Organization 00(0)

from the algorithmic decision—flawed data may be fed back to the database, causing negative out-
comes since the algorithms were working with biased data (e.g. Cunha and Carugati, 2018).

Conclusion
Our framework informs future research on algorithmic decision-making and the use of AI in auto-
mated data analysis in organizations. These findings are based on the notion of user involvement,
which media theory has traditionally connoted as having to do with psychology (e.g. Krugman,
1971). Our framework on the role of AI is built primarily on the constitutive elements of humans’
detachment from and attachments to decision-making that users face in mastering their involve-
ment in decision-making. In doing so, we answer the question concerning the distance between
humans and their decision authority.
However, we also raise the issue of the ontological distance between or convergence of humans and
AI. In this context, our framework works as a theoretical starting point for researchers who seek to
address the ontological categorization of human versus algorithmic intelligence (Westerhoff, 2005).
Similarly, our findings on rational distancing, which are grounded in the divergence between algorith-
mic decisions and human decision logic, suggest that future research in organization studies consider
in more detail the role of epistemologies in algorithmic decision-making (Abbasi et al., 2016; Pachidi
et al., 2014). On the workplace level, considering the user interface as the site of clashing rationalities
could be a fruitful approach to explaining decision-making in organizations (Bader and Kaiser, 2017).
Our findings are based on a single case study on the implementation of a cognitive system in a
call center, an empirical setting that is at the forefront of the development of algorithmic decisions
since workplace decisions in this setting are usually structured and can be easily automated. Future
research may use the framework as theoretical guidance not only in contexts in which human-
algorithmic decision assemblages are part of operational, routine, and daily workplace decisions,
such as high-frequency trading (Borche and Lange, 2017) and loan processing (Chae, 2014), but
also in more complex and unstructured decision-making domains, such as people analytics
(Boudreau and Cascio, 2017; Loebbecke and Picot, 2015; Markus, 2017).
Finally, our study shows the potential of drawing on the rich corpus of media studies in analyzing
the empirical phenomenon of digitization in organizations. Envisioning user interfaces that pre-
scribe decision options as mediators that involve humans more or less in decisions allowed us to
delve into the organizational context of the use of digital media and to elaborate our framework on
the dual detaching and attaching roles of AI’s functionalities in workplace decisions. This approach
points to the role media studies can play in explaining organizational phenomena during the process
of digitization and beyond. Without taking into account the interfaces that present algorithmic deci-
sions as mediators of specific forms of humans’ detachments and attachments, and without empha-
sizing this dual role of AI in workplace decisions, future research might neglect the ongoing human
involvement and go too far in the debate about algorithms as autonomous elements.

ORCID iD
Verena Bader https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4732-506X

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Author biographies
Verena Bader is a PhD candidate in human resources and organization at the Bundeswehr University Munich.
Her research interests lie at the intersection of information systems, organization, and work. Specifically, she
focuses on research questions in the areas of digital technologies artificial intelligence in their relation to
human actors as well as their intertwinement’s implications for work and organizing.
Stephan Kaiser is a professor in the School of Economics and Management at the Bundeswehr University
Munich. Where he has been a faculty member since 2009. He received his Ph.D. from the Catholic University
of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt. His main research interests are in organizational theory, work and human resources.