{"id":4044,"date":"2026-09-21T15:46:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T13:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/en\/?p=4044"},"modified":"2026-10-27T10:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T09:28:10","slug":"ai-management-is-dead-long-live-management-an-opinion-piece-by-anne-laure-pams-for-focusrh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/en\/our-news\/ai-management-is-dead-long-live-management-an-opinion-piece-by-anne-laure-pams-for-focusrh\/","title":{"rendered":"AI: Management Is Dead – Long Live Management! – An Opinion Piece by Anne-Laure Pams for FocusRH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Can a machine fire someone? Three years ago, the question might have raised a smile. Today, no one is laughing. Artificial intelligence is no longer merely assisting managers: it is encroaching on their most sensitive territory – authority. Meta has been accused of collecting employee performance data with a view to preparing redundancies. At one Bay Area company, an AI system issued disciplinary warnings to an employee before recommending their dismissal. These are no longer hypothetical future scenarios; they are real events. And they raise a question that few are prepared to ask outright: do managers still serve a purpose?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legitimacy Under Threat<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Managers traditionally derived their authority from three pillars: they knew, they controlled and they made the decisions. All three are now being shaken at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They knew more than their teams – or were expected to. That position as the person \u201cin the know\u201d collapses the moment an employee can access greater expertise than their manager\u2019s at the click of a button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They controlled the work: reporting, deadlines, task allocation and productivity measurement. AI can now automate a large proportion of these activities, at a scale and speed never seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They made the decisions. Yet the two examples above show that some organisations are already delegating disciplinary judgement to algorithms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should be clear-eyed about this: if management amounts to no more than that, it no longer has any reason to exist. And the temptation to pursue short-term savings is very real: replacing an expensive layer of management with a system that is available around the clock is a calculation that is already being made in some executive committees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leadership: The Only Real Added Value<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What remains is precisely what AI cannot do: set a direction, bring a team together around a shared sense of purpose, build trust, make judgements amid uncertainty and, above all, take responsibility for the decisions made. That foundation cannot be delegated to a machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has never been rarer – and therefore never more valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent examples of errors produced or amplified by AI illustrate the limits of delegation without human oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of the Californian company, the system had failed to apply correctly a rule that it had itself helped to formalise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New Zealand, a report bearing Deloitte\u2019s name is said to have relied on outdated data, with a potential error estimated at $21.5 million. These two failures do not mean that \u201cAI is incompetent\u201d; rather, they show that \u201cAI without human oversight can become dangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An analysis can be sophisticated, data-rich and highly persuasive in its presentation – yet fundamentally wrong. Checking source data, questioning assumptions and challenging conclusions: this is work that no machine can delegate to itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What appeared to weaken the manager\u2019s position in fact makes their role more legitimate: without human critical judgement, AI amplifies its errors rather than correcting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The manager of tomorrow will look less like a traditional boss and more like an airline pilot: even if the machine handles most of the flight, they must be ready to take back control at the first sign of turbulence. Automation does not eliminate their role; it shifts their expertise away from execution and towards judgement and accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full article on the FocusRH website (french only).<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can a machine fire someone? Three years ago, the question might have raised a smile. Today, no one is laughing. Artificial intelligence is no longer merely assisting managers: it is encroaching on their most sensitive territory – authority. Meta has been accused of collecting employee performance data with a view to preparing redundancies. At one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":2902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"activity":[4],"topical-themes":[],"news-type":[36],"class_list":["post-4044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAI: Management Is Dead - Long Live Management! - An Opinion Piece by Anne-Laure Pams for FocusRH - Grant Alexander<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/en\/our-news\/ai-management-is-dead-long-live-management-an-opinion-piece-by-anne-laure-pams-for-focusrh\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AI: Management Is Dead - Long Live Management! - An Opinion Piece by Anne-Laure Pams for FocusRH - Grant Alexander\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Can a machine fire someone? 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