CERIC Seminar with James Faulconbridge: “For the client: generative machine learning and the relational reinforcement of professional expertise”

James Faulconbridge is Deputy Dean at Lancaster University Management School and has researched extensively with professional service sectors such as advertising, accounting, law and the impact of AI.

Abstract

Studies of the way professionals respond to the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on their work increasingly focus less on questions about whether AI will replace the work of professionals or be resisted and rejected, and more on how AI is integrated, accommodated and collaborated with to reimagine claims to expertise. Interest in the way professionals integrate AI have emphasized, in particular, the way the client is mobilised to legitimize changes. Studies have identified narratives about “innovation driven by client needs” (Pemer and Werr, 2023: 28) and “a shift in view away from the professional-client dyad to a triad encompassing professional, client and technology” (Scarborough et al., 2024: 23). In this view, a key concern is the way professionals integrate AI to allow them to protect, extend and diversify their client jurisdictions and the associated work tasks. In this paper we, therefore, ask: how does the integration of generative machine learning into professional work lead to evolutions in the way professionals generate and apply their expertise through relationships with clients? We show how the integration of generative machine learning results in relational reinforcement as the application of expertise in and through client relationships evolves. This happens when expertise application and generation tasks are diminished, magnified and forged. Our analysis of relational reinforcement reveals the strategic ways that the tasks of professionals are both preserved and diversified by the integration of generative machine learning which becomes an actor influencing how expertise is applied in and through client relationships.

James Faulconbridge - Professor and Deputy Dean at Lancaster University Management School.

His research focuses on professional service firms, and most recently the impacts of artificial intelligence on professional work and firms. James has completed extensive research in several professional service sectors, including advertising, accounting, architecture, executive search and law. Most recently, James is part of the Technology in Professional Services (TiPS) project that is supporting accounting and law firms to accelerate the adoption of new technologies through effective management practices.