AI Mandate or Workplace Bullying? When Driving Adoption Crosses the Line

One AI Directive. Two Leadership Approaches.

Two leaders receive the same AI directive. One drives adoption. The other co-creates ownership.

Consider this fictional case, which draws on decades of firsthand corporate experience—supporting initiatives while challenging traditional adoption practices from within—along with findings from my doctoral qualitative research that identified the same recurring patterns:

ABC Company directs every division to identify how AI can improve business performance. The responsibility falls to two division leaders: Morgan Reed and Jordan Ellis.

Division Leader Morgan Reed

Morgan assembles a small, hand-selected team of employee representatives. Together, they select the technology, define the use cases, design the rollout, and establish the deadline—before the broader workforce is invited into the conversation.

When employee Sam raises concerns about accuracy and customer data privacy, Morgan calls Sam “resistant.” At the next meeting, Morgan describes Sam as “not a team player.”

Soon, Sam is removed from the pilot, excluded from planning discussions, and given a lower adaptability rating—despite no decline in job performance.

Morgan repeats the same pro-AI messages to the entire division every week. Employees are invited to ask questions and provide feedback, but their input is treated as noise rather than information—collected to check a box, not used to shape the initiative.

Eventually, the questions disappear. Everyone smiles and publicly supports the initiative.

No one shouts. No explicit threat is made.

Inside the division, employees continue to avoid the AI, create workarounds, and encounter unresolved problems.

But those realities do not reach senior leadership.

Morgan controls the upward narrative. Concerns are sanitized. Nonuse and unresolved problems disappear from the reports. Senior leaders hear that adoption is increasing and everything is going “great.”

The dashboard is green. Reality is not.

Employee silence is mistaken for support—even though many have simply learned which information is safe to share.

Division Leader Jordan Ellis

Jordan receives the same directive.

Before selecting a technology, Jordan interviews every impacted employee and facilitates discovery sessions to understand how the work is done, what AI should solve, where risks exist, what safeguards are needed, and how success should be measured.

Jordan reflects the findings back to employees and shows them how their concerns and ideas are shaping the initiative. When genuine constraints limit what can be implemented, Jordan explains what cannot change and why.

Friction still arises. Employees encounter AI inaccuracies, workflow disruptions, duplicated work, and unexpected problems.

But Jordan does not dismiss these issues as noise or label the employees raising them as resistant. The friction is welcomed as a form of transition intelligence. Employees are invited to help investigate the causes, test solutions, and co-create adjustments to the technology, workflows, safeguards, and training.

Messaging remains transparent about what is working, what is not, what has been learned, and what will change. Senior leaders receive the same unfiltered picture as the employees experiencing the transition.

Employees can see their fingerprints throughout the initiative. They feel heard, respected, and proud of what they are helping create. Their motivation comes from meaningful involvement—not pressure to display enthusiasm.

Ownership is not announced or demanded. It develops because employees helped build the initiative and continue to shape it as challenges arise.

Both divisions eventually implement AI.

Adoption Versus Ownership

One leader reports increased adoption.

The other builds genuine ownership.

Morgan followed a familiar, adoption-driven buy-in playbook:

•      Select a small team

•      Define the solution

•      Communicate repeatedly

•      Collect feedback

•      Drive adoption

•      Report progress

Jordan rethought that playbook through Transition Empowerment:

•      Engage every impacted employee

•      Co-create the solution

•      Welcome friction as information

•      Learn and adjust together

•      Report transparently

•      Build ownership

Where Does the Line Blur?

So, when—if at all—does a traditional adoption-driven approach cross the line into coercion or workplace bullying?

•      When a concern is labeled resistance?

•      When an employee becomes “not a team player”?

•      When exclusion and career consequences follow?

•      When problems are sanitized, shielding senior leaders from reality until it is too late to act?

Or are these simply traditional adoption practices that organizations have long rewarded in the name of progress?

When questions are silenced, dissent is punished, and operational reality is hidden, should this still be called leadership—or has it crossed into coercion or workplace bullying?

Research Grounding

Workplace bullying is not defined by a single unpopular mandate. The American Nurses Association (n.d.) describes bullying as repeated, intentional acts of hostility or aggression—often involving a power imbalance—that cause harm or distress over time. An International Labor Organization working paper examining cyberbullying draws on established workplace-bullying research and similarly emphasizes repeated behavior, harm, social exclusion, and an imbalance of power (De Stefano et al., 2020). The concern, then, is not merely that an AI directive exists. It is what repeatedly happens to employees who question it, challenge it, or reveal problems within it.

Psychology also helps explain the difference between adoption and ownership. Self-determination theory connects autonomy, competence, and relatedness with work motivation (Gagné & Deci, 2005). Psychological ownership research helps explain how people develop a felt sense that something is “mine” or “ours” (Pierce et al., 2001). These perspectives do not suggest that every decision must be popular. Together, these theories help explain why genuine employee empowerment can foster motivation and ownership, while participation that merely checks a box may produce little more than reported compliance.

The Script Must Flip

The script must flip: from driving adoption to co-creating ownership.

Don’t bully people into AI. Invite them to help build it.

Where would you draw the line?

References

Access note. The DOI links below lead to the official publication records. Full-text access to some journal articles may require a university or institutional subscription.

American Nurses Association. (n.d.). Workplace violence. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/work-environment/wpv/(opens in new tab)

De Stefano, V., Durri, I., Stylogiannis, C., & Wouters, M. (2020). “System needs update”: Upgrading protection against cyberbullying and ICT-enabled violence and harassment in the world of work (ILO Working Paper No. 1). International Labour Organization. https://researchrepository.ilo.org/esploro/outputs/encyclopediaEntry/995219305402676(opens in new tab)

Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331–362. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.322(opens in new tab)

Pierce, J. L., Kostova, T., & Dirks, K. T. (2001). Toward a theory of psychological ownership in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 298–310. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378028(opens in new tab)