The impact of AI governance and audit assurance on organizational trust management in digital enterprises: An empirical study

The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought significant automation and efficiency to digital enterprises, as well as huge amounts of data that are used for decision-making. Together with the growing number of applications of AI systems, concerns about the lack of transparency, accountability, ethical behavior, and the resulting lack of trust with stakeholders and others are on the rise. This research focuses on the impact that AI governance and audit assurance have on the trust management of digital enterprises. A quantitative and empirical approach has been chosen to survey 500 participants, including IT managers, internal auditors, compliance officers, and governance experts from across the world, using a structured online questionnaire. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) software was used to analyze the data collected, namely the software of SmartPLS/AMOS. The results show that AI governance can significantly influence organizational trust management (β = 0.681, p < 0.05), and audit assurance has a positive mediation effect between governance and trust. The study’s findings offer novel insights for AI governance and digital trust, suggesting an integrated governance-assurance model to facilitate the responsible implementation of AI systems and foster trust among various stakeholders in digital enterprise settings.