Veranstaltungsprogramm der VHB Tagung

Overview

Modern societies face a paradox: while artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies promise unprecedented efficiency and learning capacity, administrative complexity and bureaucratic burden continue to rise. Bureaucracy—originally designed to ensure fairness, accountability, and reliability— has increasingly become a barrier to innovation, participation, and responsiveness in both public and private organizations (Bullock, 2019; Vatamanu & Tofan, 2025). The panel “AI for Impact – Innovating Bureaucracy through Artificial Intelligence and Digitalization” explores how AI can be used to re bureaucratize institutions in an impact-oriented way—that is, to design administrative systems that are not only faster and leaner, but also more transparent, participatory, and just (Alon-Barkat & Busuioc, 2024; Gillingham, Morley, & Floridi, 2025; Corrigan, 2022). Recent research highlights how AI increasingly augments and automates decision-making processes, transforming managerial and administrative judgment itself (Gümüsay, Bohné, & Davenport, 2023). Rather than reducing bureaucracy to inefficiency, the discussion frames it as a normative and organizational infrastructure that can be transformed through digital technologies. We distinguish three complementary roles of AI: 

• AI for automation: streamlining repetitive administrative tasks (e.g., form checking, compliance reporting) (Mehr, Ash, & Fellow, 2017).
• AI for augmentation: supporting human judgment in complex regulatory contexts (e.g., document summarization, eligibility assessment) (Alon-Barkat & Busuioc, 2024).
• AI for transformation: enabling new forms of governance and accountability through data driven transparency and co-designed regulation (Lawrence, Cui, & Ho, 2023; Wuttke, Rauchfleisch, & Jungherr, 2025).

The panel will debate how AI can increase the legitimacy and societal impact of administrative systems while avoiding algorithmic opacity, deskilling, and loss of democratic control (Gillingham et al., 2025; Vatamanu & Tofan, 2025). By bridging organizational theory, information systems, and public management, this session invites scholars to rethink bureaucracy not as a relic of the past, but as a domain for responsible innovation shaping the future of business and society (Corrigan, 2022; Lawrence et al., 2023).

Format

The session is planned as a 60-minute interactive panel discussion including:

• Introductory framing (5 min): The paradox of bureaucracy and innovation in the digital age.
• Panel discussion (30 min): Scholarly and practical perspectives on AI-enabled re bureaucratization.
• Audience interaction (15 min): Open exchange on implications for research, policy, and education.

The panel bridges the communities of WK ORG, WK TIE, WK WI, and WK NAMA, encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue on responsible digital transformation and impact-oriented management.

The panelists include experts from WK Org, WK TIE, WK WI as well as from practice.