AI-Enabled Organizational Change and the Trust Paradox: A Scoping Review of Leadership, Employee Voice, and Workplace Adaptation

Abstract

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) is currently transforming contemporary workplaces; its adoption is changing how organizations make decisions, coordinate work, manage employees, and deliver their products and services. Although artificial intelligence offers opportunities for the improvement of organizational performance, productivity, innovation, and decision-making, the implementation of AI also creates challenges that are related to employee trust, job uncertainty, changing work roles, discrimination, and workplace adaptation. This scoping review mapped current evidence on AI-enabled organizational change and the trust paradox, with attention to leadership, employee voice, trust, and workplace adaptation. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology, relevant studies that were published between 2016 and 2026 were identified and synthesized from journals including Dimensions, African Journals Online (AJOL), and Google Scholar. The search identified 2930 records; 150 records were further screened after considering relevant preliminary screening criteria, and then duplicates were removed. Following abstract and title screening, 123 papers were excluded, leaving a total of 27 publications that were included in the final synthesis, which comprises empirical studies, systematic and literature reviews, and conceptual or theoretical publications. The findings indicate that AI-enabled organizational change is not only a technological process, but it also involves human and organizational processes that are shaped by leadership, communication, organizational support, employee voice, trust, skills development, and ethical governance. The review also identified a trust paradox in which AI can improve efficiency and performance while generating concerns about displacement of jobs, loss of autonomy, discrimination, surveillance, and reduced control by humans. Successful implementation of AI requires human-centered leadership, employee participation that is meaningful, transparent communication, workplace learning, and responsible governance.