Artificial Intelligence : An approach for decision-making in crisis management

Sammanfattning: The interest in crisis management is increasing for some decades now, since researchers and organizations have realized that crises can endanger them severely and that all kinds of organization are potentially under the constant threat of crises. Artificial intelligence (AI) is also in the heart of the attention as some tasks, traditionally occupied by humans, are already replaced by AI agents, and the fast development achieves more and more promising results. As the core of AI, decision-making has been identified, which itself can also completely change the outcome of a crisis. Thus, the idea to explore the junction of these two fields in the light of decision-making processes appeared to be highly inter-esting. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is: first, to find out what is really important in deci-sion-making processes in crisis management, second, to figure out abilities and limita-tions for human and artificial intelligences, and lastly, how artificial intelligence can af-fect important characteristics of decision-making processes in a foreseeable period of time. Putting all together led to the research question: How artificial intelligence can affect decision-making processes in crisis management? To guide these efforts, a qualitative method with an interpretivist approach has been cho-sen. Therefore, crisis experts (managers and consultants) and AI experts (researchers and developers) were interviewed. Also, notes were taken from a conference about artificial intelligence. As a result, it has been found out that speed and comprehensiveness are two crucial fac-tors when making decisions in crisis situations. Additionally, empirical findings figured out that this approach needs to be extended by the two decision parameters short- and long-term effect as it is not just about decision-making itself, but also about the feasibility and future consequences of decisions made. A model for ‘successful decision-making in crisis situations’ could be developed and the roles of intuition and rationality as well as abilities and limitations were clarified for both, human and artificial intelligence. Based on this understanding, artificial and human intelligence could have been placed within our model, showing the complement nature of them. Finally, an exploratory an-swer to the research question could be derived, presented as short-, medium-, and long-term perspectives. Even though crisis management can be expected to be one of the last organizational fields invested by AI, the results show that there are great benefits of ap-plying AI in crisis management, leading in a high potential that AI will change the picture dramatically.