Artificial Intelligence as an Endogenous Mechanism of Institutional Isomorphism

Emerging technologies equipped with artificial intelligence are improving in their capability to autonomously make decisions on behalf of people and organizations. We argue that organizations’ implementation of these AI technologies will perpetuate a new mechanism of isomorphism, through which the work practices of organizations will become increasingly similar over time, which we call endogenous isomorphism. Unlike mechanisms of isomorphism that depend on knowledgeable actors’ responses to the institutional field, endogenous isomorphism occurs as AI technologies implement patterns gleaned from aggregated data across time and space. In this chapter, we draw on organizational theory in the areas of institutional isomorphism, structuration, and organizational change to theorize the endogenous change that the use of AI technologies to autonomously make organizational decisions will contrive. We present an illustrative example of endogenous isomorphism from our research on AI scheduling technologies and discuss the theoretical, practical, and methodological implications of our conceptual argument.