Team Leaders Influence on Well-Being during unforeseen Digital Change in Knowledge Work - A Research Agenda

In Information Systems (IS) research, technology integration in work systems is often framed as a pathway to efficiency and productivity gains (Fischer & Baskerville, 2023; Sarker et al., 2019; Mumford, 2006). Such accounts typically assume a strategic trajectory shaped by managerial intent (Holmström & Magnusson, 2025; Larjovuori et al., 2018).

Less attention has been directed toward outcomes such as employee well-being and engagement (Parker et al., 2022; Fischer & Baskerville, 2023). Even more overlooked is the role of team leaders in shaping these outcomes during periods of technological disruption, and there are calls for more research on their influence (Larjovuori et al., 2018; Brown & Fischer, 2024). With organizational concern for well-being on the rise (Ipsen & Edwards, 2021), IS research must expand its scope to theorize team leadership as a sociotechnical practice, ensuring that the changing nature of work evolves in ways that enhance rather than undermine employee well-being and organizational life.

We advance the argument that team leaders play a decisive role in shaping employee well-being during rapid and unplanned GenAI-related change, and that this influence operates through four sociotechnical team-leadership mechanisms (Brown & Fischer 2024): individualization, socialization, institutionalization, and leadership transformation. These mechanisms form the conceptual backbone of the paper and provide a coherent lens that connects sociotechnical theory, emerging evidence from GenAI-infused work, and leadership scholarship.
The contribution of this abstract is twofold: (1) we elaborate these four mechanisms as a sociotechnical framework for understanding how team leaders influence well-being amid GenAI-driven disruption, and (2) we develop a research agenda grounded in these mechanisms. This agenda provides theoretical direction for IS research and actionable insights for organizations supporting leaders during digital transformation. In this paper, we first theorize the role of team leaders during unplanned sociotechnical alterations of work; second, we define GenAI-specific challenges to employee well-being; and third, we
articulate a research agenda derived explicitly from the four mechanisms.