PhD specialisation in Communication- EMANAIRE project: Leader Legitimacy in Augmented Leadership

Handelshøyskolen BI; Oslo; On-site; NOK 600,000 - 650,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Teaching 25%

Stipend NOK 623,200 gross

Job summary

BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo invites applications for a four‑year PhD scholarship under the EMANAIRE project on Leader Legitimacy in Augmented Leadership. The candidate will study how AI reshapes leadership, authority and accountability, while conducting rigorous qualitative and quantitative research across organisational settings.

The program emphasizes supervision by BI faculty, interdisciplinary integration, and an intersectoral secondment.

Qualifications

• Master's degree with thesis work or an equivalent research degree is required.
• Strong training in qualitative and/or quantitative research methods is expected.
• Excellent command of written and spoken English; fluency in additional languages is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Study leader–employee–AI triads and how governance shapes leader legitimacy over time.
• Collect and analyse critical incidents involving AI‑supported decisions to understand legitimacy dynamics.
• Investigate when AI‑augmented leadership resembles algorithmic management and how employees respond.
• Explore how AI affects leader identity, responsibility, and willingness to lead.
• Design, pilot, and evaluate interventions that help leaders use AI while maintaining independent judgement.

Skills

Leadership

Organisational behaviour

Legitimacy

Authority

AI in organisations

Qualitative research

Quantitative research

Mixed-methods research

Research ethics

Academic writing

English proficiency

Education

Master's degree with thesis

Research master/M.Phil.

Job description

PhD specialisation in Communication- EMANAIRE project: Leader Legitimacy in Augmented Leadership

Skole - Universitet

BI Norwegian Business School's Departments of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, and Communication and Culture, invite applications for this four-year doctoral scholarship in the EMANAIRE project “Leader Legitimacy in Augmented Leadership”.

About EMANAIRE

EMANAIRE: https://emanaire.eu/ is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network bringing together 15 doctoral candidates at nine European universities to study how AI is changing work. Its projects examine what happens when generative and agentic AI enters leadership, everyday workflows, team communication, professional learning and career decisions. Across the network, human agency means the practical ability to understand AI-supported decisions, exercise judgement, question outputs and shape how work is organised. Each researcher joins an international cohort, receives supervision across institutions and takes part in three residential schools, methods workshops, monthly research seminars and joint work with organisations beyond academia. Every project includes a planned six-month intersectoral secondment.

The doctoral project

AI is giving leadership a rare opportunity to redefine itself. As AI agents take on more of what leadership has long involved, including decision‑making, monitoring, coordination, and communication, organisations face a fundamental question: how much authority should remain with human leaders, how much should be delegated to AI, and what does this mean for leaders' legitimacy?

This project studies how leaders build, lose, and rebuild legitimacy as AI takes on a growing share of leadership work. The first research stream examines how employees judge leader legitimacy when leaders rely on AI. Drawing on critical incidents of AI‑supported decisions, you will investigate how different allocations of authority and oversight between leaders and AI, such as decision rights, transparency, human override, and visible oversight, shape perceptions of legitimacy. A particular focus is the boundary between AI‑augmented leadership and de facto algorithmic management, and when employees perceive leadership as no longer meaningfully human‑led.

The second stream focuses on leaders themselves. It explores how increasing reliance on AI affects leaders' sense of identity, responsibility, and willingness to pursue leadership roles, especially when the volume of AI‑mediated work exceeds what leaders can realistically evaluate.

The third stream translates these insights into practice. Working with executive learners, you will design and test interventions that help leaders use AI effectively while maintaining independent judgement and accountability.

The project combines critical‑incident analysis, surveys, and intervention methods across organisational settings. It will generate new theory on legitimacy in AI‑augmented leadership and provide practical guidance for leaders, boards, and governance bodies on responsible AI use, effective oversight, and leadership development in the age of AI.

Your work

• Study leader‑employee‑AI triads and the ways leadership routines, supervisory mediation, and governance arrangements shape leader legitimacy over time.
• Collect and analyse critical incidents involving AI‑supported decisions to understand how leaders build, lose, and regain legitimacy.
• Investigate when AI‑augmented leadership begins to resemble de facto algorithmic management, and how employees respond to this shift.
• Study how increasing reliance on AI affects leader identity, responsibility, and the attractiveness of leadership roles.
• Design, pilot, and evaluate interventions that help leaders use AI effectively while maintaining independent judgement and accountability.
• Refine the research questions and design with the supervision team and prepare ethics, data‑management and open‑science materials.
• Complete a doctoral thesis and related research outputs under the host doctoral programme and EMANAIRE plan.
• Take part in local and network‑wide training, cohort activities, reviews, dissemination and practitioner engagement.
• Undertake the six‑month intersectoral secondment and the separate academic mobility visit.
• Contribute to research integrity, equality, responsible AI, open science and FAIR data practices.

Who we are looking for

The candidate will join BI's four‑year doctoral programme, designed for talented students who wish to pursue an international academic career and contribute to the international research community through high‑quality publications. Recruitment of PhD candidates is an important part of the department's research agenda and BI's ambition to be a leading European business school.

Eligible applicants must have completed, or complete by the start date, a Master of Science degree with thesis work, a research master's/M.Phil. degree, or a comparable degree relevant to the PhD specialisation in Communication. Relevant disciplinary backgrounds include, but are not limited to, communication, media studies, human‑computer interaction, information systems, sociology, psychology, management, organisational behaviour, human resource management, law and technology, science and technology studies, political science, or related social‑science and interdisciplinary fields. An MBA degree does not fulfil the requirements for admission.

For this project, the following qualities will be viewed as advantageous:

• Interest in leadership, organisational behaviour, legitimacy, authority, and the role of AI in organisations.
• Training in qualitative, quantitative, longitudinal, multilevel, or mixed‑methods research.
• Ability to study sensitive workplace relationships and emerging technologies with methodological rigour and strong research ethics.
• Interest in how AI reshapes leadership, decision‑making, legitimacy, and leader‑employee relationships.
• Interest in intervention research and in developing theoretically grounded and practically relevant approaches to responsible AI‑augmented leadership.
• Strong analytical and academic writing skills, with motivation to publish in international peer‑reviewed journals.
• Excellent command of written and spoken English; fluency in German is a plus.

Supervision and integration at BI

The selected candidate will receive close supervision and follow‑up from research faculty. The main supervisor is Associate Professor Petra Kipfelsberger. The candidate will be integrated into the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Department of Communication and Culture and the wider EMANAIRE network.

Employment and support

The four‑year scholarship is currently NOK 623,200 gross per year and will be adjusted according to applicable regulations. The position provides membership in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund (Statens Pensjonskasse). Twenty‑five per cent of working time is reserved for teaching. The candidate's workplace will be BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway.

Further information about the doctoral programme and admission requirements is available from BI's PhD Administration ([e-mail]) and the PhD specialisation in Communication: https://www.bi.no/en/programmes-and-individual-courses/phd/communication/.

MSCA eligibility

Applicants may be of any nationality. To be eligible for MSCA funding, the selected candidate must, on the first day of MSCA employment: (i) not hold a doctoral degree; candidates who have successfully defended a doctoral thesis but have not yet formally received the degree are not eligible; (ii) comply with the MSCA mobility rule, meaning they must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Norway for more than 12 months during the 36 months immediately preceding that date, excluding compulsory national service, short stays such as holidays, and time spent in a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention; and (iii) be enrolled in, or meet the conditions required for timely enrolment in, the doctoral programme leading to the degree specified in this notice. The appointment is conditional on documentary verification of these conditions and fulfilment of the host institution's doctoral admission requirements.

More information

Questions about the project can be addressed to Associate Professor Petra Kipfelsberger at [e-mail].

Questions about the PhD specialisation in Communication can be addressed to Academic Program Manager Christian Fieseler at [e-mail]. Questions about the application process can be sent to BI's PhD Administration at [e-mail].

Application deadline: 1 November 2026