Leveraging artificial intelligence: the machine/human agentic impact on evolving practices in learning & development

The practices and processes enabling learning within organisations have emanated from the metacognitive abilities of humans that have been ‘agentic’ in creating action plans, adopting goals, visualising outcomes, and providing direction and coherence. Rapid technological advancement has increased the adoption of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), in various Human Resource Management (HRM) domains, which demonstrate agentic behaviour. A perspective of human-centered AI (HCAI) is needed to understand better the development of structures and protocols for learning and development (L&D) practices in organisations with human-centered design, which is poorly understood. Our study adopts a practice lens to examine human and technology agents’ embodying structures and routines in L&D functions within organisations. We adopt an exploratory qualitative approach and analyze 24 HR & L&D leaders’ interviews by deploying Gioia's methodology. We find that L&D practitioners currently use and plan to use AI in various applications, which change protocols and activities of human and technology agents. Based on our findings, we propose a conceptual framework for leveraging AI in L&D, operating with different structures, and encompassing various conjoined agencies.