The Promise and Peril of Generative AI for Organizational Selection and Socialization

Organizational survival and success depend on having members who have a sharedunderstanding about the enterprise’s purpose and strategy. Organizations therefore invest heavilyin the selection and socialization of new members. Since the public release of generativeartificial intelligence based on large language models (GAI) in 2022, organizational leaders havebeen grappling with foundational questions about how this new technology will reshape thesecore activities. Although it is difficult to make precise predictions amid ongoing technologicalferment, here we offer informed guesses about the trajectory of GAI-driven change inorganizational selection and socialization. To organize our predictions, we draw on three keyconceptual distinctions. First, we distinguish between the ability of GAI to select and socializeindividuals who are internally committed to organizationally desirable values, versus individualswho only perform these values. Our second distinction pertains to the cross-pressures of fitting inversus standing out within organizations. Third, we distinguish between how GAI is adoptedinitially, and responses to these configurations by strategic actors, which we refer to as “secondorder effects.” Based on these distinctions, we array our predictions across three phases, witheach new phase a response to the tensions and dissatisfactions of a preceding one.