Crafting meaningful AI-enabled knowledge work

This paper reports from an ongoing research project on meaningful adoption and use of Generative Artificial Intelligence within the Communication Department of a Danish Municipality. Given its capacity to generate images, information, and text, GenAI models are positioned as being potentially transformative to cognitive tasks in knowledge work, raising concerns about skill displacement and a loss of meaning in the profession. This paper presents a set of sociotechnical principles for the introduction and integration of novel technologies, such as GenAI, while retaining meaningfulness in work. These principles were crafted by combining work design theory and extensive empirical material gathered through Action Design Research, in close collaboration with employees from the department. Centering the need for a common understanding of expectations for GenAI, the principles also point to the importance of organizational support to enable autonomous experimentation and accountability, while emphasizing transparency surrounding the decision-making process for the use of GenAI.