Leadership work in an AI development project: How topicalizing takes part in the production of direction

Abstract

Leadership work in the digital age requires leaders to focus more sharply on how direction is created as their organizations become increasingly intertwined with unsettled and complex technological objects. This article is based on an 18-month observational study into the ongoing process of an AI development project intended to improve organizational efficiency. By observing project meetings, we obtained naturally occurring, interactional data. Our communication as constitutive of organizing (CCO) approach enabled us to study how hybrid (human and nonhuman) actors produce direction – i.e., do leadership – in situ. Offering the concept of topicalizing – the initiation of producing direction – as a fruitful analytical term, this article contributes to the literature on leadership in interaction, especially the stream informed by sociomaterial and communicational studies.