Corporate Governance at the Crossroads of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing corporate governance (CG), creating a lack of consensus among studies regarding its impact. The purpose of this article is to critically explore scholars’ perspectives on AI’s transformative role in CG, from one side, and suggest the necessary strategies to ensure its responsible and effective integration from another side. The authors have conducted a systematic literature review following the PRISMA flowcharts, analysed 24 indexed journal articles and conference papers using Zotero for reference management, and VOSviewer for bibliometric analysis. The findings start by a double analysis of the AI implementation in CG - ‘nice-to-have’ or ‘must-have’ versus ‘disruption’ or ‘integration’ - categorising the literature into three groups drawing for scholars: ‘enhancers’, ‘integrators’, ‘pioneers’ and a fourth category perceived by the authors, ‘catalysts’. In addition, a set of five strategies for optimising AI use is proposed: ethical frameworks, strengthened governance, skills development, transparency and control mechanisms, and aligning AI with strategic objectives. This study aims to fill two inter-correlated research gaps: exploring how AI is perceived in governance contexts and its potential to integrate with or disrupt traditional structures and establishing a theoretical intersection between the ‘governance of AI’ and the ‘governance by AI’.