Skip to content
Open access

Deliver cross-process automation across Finance, HR, Procurement by orchestrating actions across diverse systems -powered by AI & governed workflows

2026 · AHFE International · Vol 203 · 0 citations

TL;DR

This research demonstrates that when designed with ergonomics, human values, and socio‑technical principles at the center, agentic AI become powerful enablers of human‑centric, resilient, and adaptive enterprises.

Abstract

The rapid diffusion of data‑driven automation and agentic AI systems is reshaping the foundations of work, decision‑making, and human–technology interaction. As organizations move toward Society 5.0— Japan’s vision for a human-centered “super smart” society in which cyber-physical intelligence augments human capability across economic and social systems—there is an urgent need for operational architectures that are not only technologically capable but also fundamentally human‑centric. This paper presents an applied model using Intelligent Operations framework that integrates agentic AI, enterprise data fabric, human‑in‑the‑loop governance, and secure multi‑system orchestration, and enterprise digital twins that simulate processes and operational states for context-aware decision support. The result is an adaptive socio‑technical system that enhances human decision‑making rather than replacing it, while simultaneously enabling automation at operational scale.The research builds on fieldwork across finance, supply chain, HR, and complex asset‑intensive environments, where organizational processes are distributed across heterogeneous platforms such as ERP, HCM, workflow systems, enterprise data lakes, RPA tools, and emerging AI orchestration layers. Traditional human‑computer interaction models are insufficient in these environments because workers face fragmented data landscapes, inconsistent process execution, and increasing cognitive load. The proposed Intelligent Operations framework addresses these pain points by introducing an orchestration layer that harmonizes data, interprets context (including real-time insights from digital twin models), and deploys agentic AI workers capable of completing multi‑step tasks across systems.A key contribution of this work is the definition of agentic AI in enterprise socio‑technical ecosystems—AI agents equipped not only with language models and planning capability but also with secure access to enterprise systems through structured patterns such as passthrough APIs, workflow orchestration, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and agent‑to‑agent (A2A) collaboration. Rather than relying on brittle rule‑based workflows, the agents dynamically interpret goals, assess context, and plan actionable sequences while maintaining traceability, decision lineage, and auditability. This supports a new form of “digital labor” that works alongside human employees to augment cognitive, administrative, and analytical tasks. However, the framework insists on human‑in‑the‑loop governance, recognizing that human oversight remains essential for ethical, safe, and responsible AI deployment. The DMO acts as a security and compliance boundary—enforcing identity controls, audit trails, approval checkpoints, policy enforcement, and anomaly detection throughout the agentic automation lifecycle. This hybrid model ensures that automation amplifies human capability without bypassing institutional safeguards or creating new forms of risk.The paper also discusses the human‑centric business implications: reduced cognitive load for knowledge workers, increased transparency of decision processes, improvements in cross‑functional collaboration, and the redefinition of roles as humans transition from transactional executors to supervisors, interpreters, and strategic actors. Proposed framework becomes the backbone for Society 5.0 organizational design—linking people, processes, data, and intelligent systems through a unified operational fabric.This research demonstrates that when designed with ergonomics, human values, and socio‑technical principles at the center, agentic AI become powerful enablers of human‑centric, resilient, and adaptive enterprises.

Read PDF

Similar papers

Open access Aug 2026

An Agentic ERP Governance Framework for Autonomous AI Agent Deployment in Cloud-Based Industrial Management Systems

Cloud ERP platforms have passed through three distinct automation eras. Scripted batch jobs gave way to robotic process automation, and RPA is now giving way to autonomous agentic AI — systems that reason over enterprise data, select tools dynamically, and execute multi-step business workflows without human direction at every step. The shift is not merely a capability upgrade. Agentic systems behave non-deterministically, invoke tools whose scope may exceed what static governance models anticipate, and can produce cascading process consequences in live financial environments. Governance frameworks built for predictive models and rule-based bots were not designed for this. This paper proposes the Agentic ERP Governance Framework (AEGF), a five-dimension instrument designed to guide the responsible deployment of autonomous AI agents in cloud-based industrial management systems. Drawing on Sociotechnical Systems Theory, the Technology-Organisation-Environment framework, and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, the AEGF addresses Process Suitability, Autonomy Tiering, Governance and Auditability, Organisational Readiness, and Risk and Continuity Management as an integrated governance architecture. An application to accounts payable automation on Oracle ERP Cloud illustrates how the framework operates in a representative industrial management context.

Venkata Ramachandra Karthik Chundi · 0 citations
Review

Strategic Integration of AI for Data ‑ Driven Decisions and Strategic Integration of AI for Data Driven Decisions and Automation in Operations Management Automation in Operations Management

This study develops an evidence-informed framework for the strategic integration of AI through a PRISMA-guided systematic literature review and design science artifact construction and offers a rigorous and practical blueprint for scalable and trustworthy AI-enabled operations.

Lordt Becklines, O. El-Gayar · 0 citations
Review Open access 2026

AI-Enabled Cloud ERP Systems and Organizational Agility: Integrating Real-Time Analytics, Automation and Governance in Digital Enterprise

The paper presents a theoretical synthesis on how changes in the financial responsiveness, the operational adaptiveness, and the governance posture of digital enterprises are transformed by AI-enabled cloud ERP, by drawing from a systematic analysis of a curated Scopus-indexed corpus.

Lohgaindran Jeyeselan, Nurul Adha A Rihim, Zakiyah Awang et al. · 0 citations
2026

Governing Agentic AI in Enterprise Operations: Architectural “Rails” for Safe, Deterministic, and Compliant Autonomous Systems

This paper argues that the introduction of agentic AI requires a substantial expansion of traditional enterprise architecture principles to address new behavioral, security, and governance risks emerging from non-deterministic AI systems interacting with heterogeneous operational platforms-ERP, HCM, CLM, asset management, workflow engines, and domain-specific applications.

Elizabeth Koumpan, Vimal Dimpi · 0 citations
Open access Aug 2026

Governed Serverless Automation Ecosystem for AI-Driven Enterprise Integration and Sustainable Cloud Operations

Governance, serverless, and automation facilitate enterprise integration that is adaptive, cost-effective, low-code, and capable of creating dynamic, context-aware, and value-adding workloads. This creates a need for policy-based management that simplifies implementation in multicloud scenarios. Serverless automation, enabled by event-driven workloads and dynamic resource provisioning for short-lived tasks, can operate in multicloud environments without being controlled by any provider. Introducing artificial intelligence facilitates improvements in scheduling and resource optimization. However, these benefits are not well understood, nor are these ecosystems properly managed. What governance is required for such serverless automation in an AI-enable enterprise integration setting? What does governance in serverless environments achieve? These questions are addressed through a structured research-product approach. The concept of serverless automation is first established, then applied to governance and a serverless context.A critical perspective on governance emerges through examination of central concepts and their interplay within a formal control-compliance-risk framework. From a practical angle, governance focuses on preserving trust in business operation and service delivery. This leads to the consideration of a Cloud Automation Control Plane that governs the core events and processes of Cloud Automation on behalf of initiation parties. The enterprise integration layer can be made serverless to minimize code development, improve resilience, and enhance security with AI assistance. The AI inclusion can be exploited for intelligent workload and resource management without compromising the governing principles. These avenues in combination demonstrate that a clear governance model can enable sustainable Cloud AI Automation for the enterprises and the ecosystem.

Sridhar Mahadevan · 0 citations
Open access Aug 2026

From Automation to Agency: Distributed Algorithmic Authority in Physical AI-Enabled Warehouse Execution Systems

(1) Background: Physical artificial intelligence is progressing beyond performing tasks. As embodied AI systems integrate sensing, context-sensitive inference, orchestration, and physical actuation, the central issue shifts from automation efficiency to the redistribution of decision authority within organizational execution. (2) Methods: This paper develops a conceptual systems framework through structured, problem-centered conceptual theorizing. It integrates organizational information processing theory, requisite-variety and viable-system reasoning, near-decomposability and interactive-complexity perspectives, human-factors research, organizational authority, and socio-technical systems theory. (3) Results: The framework conceptualizes physical AI as a facility-level socio-technical execution architecture and introduces distributed algorithmic authority (DAA) as the degree to which real operational decision authority is distributed across interacting human, algorithmic, and embodied components. DAA comprises four dimensions: the scope of delegated decision rights, the locus and distribution of authority, revocability and intervention rights, and decision legibility. The framework distinguishes DAA intensity from DAA controllability and proposes an inverted-U relationship between DAA intensity and facility-level system performance. Greater DAA intensity can improve local responsiveness while eventually reducing coordination coherence and corrective control when the variety of distributed decisions exceeds the architecture’s coordinating capacity. DAA controllability and system-level control capacity—comprising governance maturity, coordinating variety, intervention capacity, and data integrity—shift the viable threshold of distributed authority. (4) Conclusions: Physical AI should be understood not simply as an automation capability, but as a socio-technical reconfiguration of execution and control whose effects depend on whether distributed operational authority remains legible, revocable, and governable at the system level.

K. Logožar · 0 citations

We use cookies to run the site and, with your consent, for analytics and to show ads. See our Cookie Policy.