Management, Leadership, and Governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: The Eight Contributions of the FILE Odyssey

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer only a technological instrument inside organizations. It is becoming a structural feature of management, leadership, strategy, decision-making, education, research, and governance. AI can automate tasks, classify situations, generate knowledge outputs, support decisions, organize work, optimize processes, and shape what leaders see before they decide. This working paper presents the FILE Odyssey as an intellectual journey and a long-term transdisciplinary research program on management, leadership, and governance in the age of artificial intelligence. AI does not reduce the need for human leadership. It makes human judgment, responsibility, care, legitimacy, education, knowledge production, and governance more decisive. The central question is not only what AI can do, but what forms of human intelligence, judgment, responsibility, and institutional protection become more necessary when AI becomes more powerful. The paper synthesizes eight original contributions of the FILE Odyssey to management and the social sciences: FILE, FILE³/FILE⁵/FILE⁷ and the 7E Cascade, RC, MAIL/MLT, HACK, LENS, Human Irreducibility, and HTTPS. Each contribution follows the same sequence: AI problem, literature review, research gap, and FILE positioning and contribution. Together, they form a conceptual, theoretical, and research-generating program for leadership, management education, responsible knowledge production, human judgment, and AI governance. The paper’s central management-theory argument is that AI should not be treated as a technical tool added to existing leadership models, but as a structural condition that changes how leaders exercise judgment, preserve relational conditions, form managers, produce knowledge, and govern institutions. For leaders, managers, executives, entrepreneurs, educators, scholars, institutions, and organizations, FILE provides a management theory and diagnostic framework for responsible leadership and decision-making in the age of artificial intelligence while preserving human judgment, dignity, responsibility, care, trust, and the capacity to govern AI systems under human leadership.