BI Norwegian Business School's Departments of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, and Communication and Culture, invite applications for this four-year doctoral scholarship in the EMANAIRE project “Leader Legitimacy in Augmented Leadership”.

About EMANAIRE

EMANAIRE is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network bringing together 15 doctoral candidates at nine European universities to study how AI is changing work. Its projects examine what happens when generative and agentic AI enters leadership, everyday workflows, team communication, professional learning and career decisions. Across the network, human agency means the practical ability to understand AI-supported decisions, exercise judgement, question outputs and shape how work is organised. Each researcher joins an international cohort, receives supervision across institutions and takes part in three residential schools, methods workshops, monthly research seminars and joint work with organisations beyond academia. Every project includes a planned six-month intersectoral secondment.

The doctoral project

AI is giving leadership a rare opportunity to redefine itself. As AI agents take on more of what leadership has long involved, including decision-making, monitoring, coordination, and communication, organisations face a fundamental question: how much authority should remain with human leaders, how much should be delegated to AI, and what does this mean for leaders' legitimacy?

This project studies how leaders build, lose, and rebuild legitimacy as AI takes on a growing share of leadership work. The first research stream examines how employees judge leader legitimacy when leaders rely on AI. Drawing on critical incidents of AI-supported decisions, you will investigate how different allocations of authority and oversight between leaders and AI, such as decision rights, transparency, human override, and visible oversight, shape perceptions of legitimacy. A particular focus is the boundary between AI-augmented leadership and de facto algorithmic management, and when employees perceive leadership as no longer meaningfully human-led.

The second stream focuses on leaders themselves. It explores how increasing reliance on AI affects leaders' sense of identity, responsibility, and willingness to pursue leadership roles, especially when the volume of AI-mediated work exceeds what leaders can realistically evaluate.

The third stream translates these insights into practice. Working with executive learners, you will design and test interventions that help leaders use AI effectively while maintaining independent judgement and accountability.

The project combines critical-incident analysis, surveys, and intervention methods across organisational settings. It will generate new theory on legitimacy in AI-augmented leadership and provide practical guidance for leaders, boards, and governance bodies on responsible AI use, effective oversight, and leadership development in the age of AI.

Your work

• Study leader-employee-AI triads and the ways leadership routines, supervisory mediation, and governance arrangements shape leader legitimacy over time.
• Collect and analyse critical incidents involving AI-supported decisions to understand how leaders build, lose, and regain legitimacy.
• Investigate when AI-augmented leadership begins to resemble de facto algorithmic management, and how employees respond to this shift.
• Study how increasing reliance on AI affects leader identity, responsibility, and the attractiveness of leadership roles.
• Design, pilot, and evaluate interventions that help leaders use AI effectively while maintaining independent judgement and accountability.
• Refine the research questions and design with the supervision team and prepare ethics, data-management and open-science materials.
• Complete a doctoral thesis and related research outputs under the host doctoral programme and EMANAIRE plan.
• Take part in local and network-wide training, cohort activities, reviews, dissemination and practitioner engagement.
• Undertake the six-month intersectoral secondment and the separate academic mobility visit.
• Contribute to research integrity, equality, responsible AI, open science and FAIR data practices.

Who we are looking for

The candidate will join BI's four-year doctoral programme, designed for talented students who wish to pursue an international academic career and contribute to the international research community through high-quality publications. Recruitment of PhD candidates is an important part of the department's research agenda and BI's ambition to be a leading European business school.

Eligible applicants must have completed, or complete by the start date, a Master of Science degree with thesis work, a research master's/M.Phil. degree, or a comparable degree relevant to the PhD specialisation in Communication. Relevant disciplinary backgrounds include, but are not limited to, communication, media studies, human-computer interaction, information systems, sociology, psychology, management, organisational behaviour, human resource management, law and technology, science and technology studies, political science, or related social-science and interdisciplinary fields. An MBA degree does not fulfil the requirements for admission.

For this project, the following qualities will be viewed as advantageous:

• Interest in leadership, organisational behaviour, legitimacy, authority, and the role of AI in organisations.
• Training in qualitative, quantitative, longitudinal, multilevel, or mixed-methods research.
• Ability to study sensitive workplace relationships and emerging technologies with methodological rigour and strong research ethics.
• Interest in how AI reshapes leadership, decision-making, legitimacy, and leader-employee relationships.
• Interest in intervention research and in developing theoretically grounded and practically relevant approaches to responsible AI-augmented leadership.
• Strong analytical and academic writing skills, with motivation to publish in international peer-reviewed journals.
• Excellent command of written and spoken English; fluency in German is a plus.

Supervision and integration at BI

The selected candidate will receive close supervision and follow-up from research faculty. The main supervisor is Associate Professor Petra Kipfelsberger. The candidate will be integrated into the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Department of Communication and Culture and the wider EMANAIRE network.

Employment and support

The four-year scholarship is currently NOK 623,200 gross per year and will be adjusted according to applicable regulations. The position provides membership in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund (Statens Pensjonskasse). Twenty-five per cent of working time is reserved for teaching. The candidate's workplace will be BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway.

Further information about the doctoral programme and admission requirements is available from BI's PhD Administration (phd@bi.no) and the PhD specialisation in Communication: https://www.bi.no/en/programmes-and-individual-courses/phd/communication/.

How to apply

Candidates are asked to upload the following material with their electronic application:

• Certificate of a A Master degree (MSc, MA, or equivalent), including transcripts of grades. The qualifying degree must include thesis work and be completed by the start date, with a grade point average of B or higher. An MBA degree does not meet the admission requirements.
• Certificate of a bachelor's degree or equivalent, including transcripts of grades. BI requires a two-year master's programme and average grades of B or higher for eligibility.
• A Diploma Supplement, or a comparable document explaining the study and grading system and the rights for further study associated with the degree.
• Other relevant certificates and transcripts.
• A 2,000-word original project proposal that engages independently with this doctoral project, including the proposed research focus, methods, schedule and relevant literature. Any use of generative AI to produce text must be clearly stated and cited.
• Curriculum vitae.
• At least two letters of recommendation from relevant employers, professors or supervisors that provide evidence of the applicant's research potential.
• Certificates from previously completed doctoral-level courses, if requesting approval of these courses for the BI PhD programme at BI Norwegian Business School.
• A complete list of publications and other documented relevant activities, where applicable.
• Signed verification document.

Applicants who do not hold a qualifying master's degree from a Nordic institution and whose qualifying degree was not taught in English must normally document English proficiency through TOEFL or IELTS, unless a waiver is granted. The minimum accepted scores are:

• TOEFL: 575 on the written test, 233 on the computer-based test, or 90 on the internet-based test.
• IELTS: overall score of 6.5.

TOEFL and IELTS scores must be from the preceding two years. The BI institution codes are GMAT 0529, TOEFL 0529 and GRE 7365. IELTS copies are accepted when the TRF number is visible. Applicants who believe they qualify for a waiver should submit the required waiver documentation.

Please note that all documents must be uploaded in the electronic application system. Documents may not be submitted by e-mail. Furthermore, documents submitted after the application deadline will not be considered. Exceptions will only be made for students who are completing their master’s degree in 2026 and do not have a final certificate when applying. Please note that applicants will not be able to revise their application once it has been submitted.

Candidates may later be asked for further information and/or invited to an interview. A candidate admitted to the programme must prepare a more detailed progress plan with milestones and courses for the four years of study.

MSCA eligibility

Applicants may be of any nationality. To be eligible for MSCA funding, the selected candidate must, on the first day of MSCA employment: (i) not hold a doctoral degree; candidates who have successfully defended a doctoral thesis but have not yet formally received the degree are not eligible; (ii) comply with the MSCA mobility rule, meaning they must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Norway for more than 12 months during the 36 months immediately preceding that date, excluding compulsory national service, short stays such as holidays, and time spent in a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention; and (iii) be enrolled in, or meet the conditions required for timely enrolment in, the doctoral programme leading to the degree specified in this notice. The appointment is conditional on documentary verification of these conditions and fulfilment of the host institution's doctoral admission requirements.

More information

Questions about the project can be addressed to Associate Professor Petra Kipfelsberger at petra.kipfelsberger@bi.no.

Questions about the PhD specialisation in Communication can be addressed to Academic Program Manager Christian Fieseler at christian.fieseler@bi.no. Questions about the application process can be sent to BI's PhD Administration at phd@bi.no.

Application deadline: 1 November 2026