AI leadership: employee perceptions and pathways to compliance

This research examines how employees evaluate AI-generated leaders and how these evaluations relate to compliance willingness. Drawing on the neurocognitive model of decision-making, it proposes that perceived data processing ability, benevolence, and eeriness are associated with perceived responsibility, ethicality, and authenticity. A two-study mixed-method design was adopted. Study 1 uses a cross-sectional survey (N = 328) analyzed with structural equation modeling and machine-learning techniques, whereas Study 2 uses semi-structured interviews (N = 20) to confirm the quantitative findings. The results show that perceived data processing ability and benevolence are positively associated with perceived responsibility and ethicality, respectively, whereas perceived eeriness is negatively associated with perceived authenticity. Responsibility, ethicality, and authenticity are positively associated with trust and compliance willingness, while machine heuristic moderates the relationship between trust and compliance willingness. Together, the quantitative and qualitative findings explain how employees evaluate AI-generated leaders and decide whether to comply with their decisions.