Posthuman Management

by Matthew E. Gladden

What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management? This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings. Other chapters investigate topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design. As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to management, this volume will interest management scholars and management practitioners who must understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.

284 pages, Hardcover

Published December 14, 2015

About the author

My research investigates the impacts of technological posthumanization on the way in which we structure organizations, social interaction, and the architecture of the spaces in which we live. Such realms include not only the physical spaces of buildings and the workplace but also cognitive, information, and experiential spaces — both ‘real’ and virtual.

Much of my work has explored the organizational and managerial implications of emerging technologies relating to social robotics, artificial general intelligence, artificial life, swarm and nanorobotics, ubiquitous computing, neural implants and neuroprosthetics, and augmented and virtual reality. I am particularly interested in the architectures of cyberspace and virtual worlds.

I generally employ qualitative approaches that attempt to synthesize methodologies from the spheres of contemporary critical and philosophical posthumanism, systems theory and cybernetics, and classical phenomenology. I both analyze ongoing developments and attempt to anticipate future dynamics of technological posthumanization.

My work has been published by The MIT Press, IOS Press, Routledge, and Ashgate and has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including The International Journal of Contemporary Management, Annales: Ethics in Economic Life, Informatyka Ekonomiczna, Frontiers in Neuroscience, and Creatio Fantastica. I've presented my research at more than a dozen international academic conferences in countries including the US, Poland, Denmark, and Croatia. My work has been cited in academic journals, books, doctoral dissertations, conference presentations, blogs, and other media.