What do all managers need to know in the field of Artificial Intelligence so that they can use it in the benefit of their own and the companies they manage? Can we accelerate the development of their AI managerial competencies by using Artificial Intelligence?

The answer to this question lies at the intersection of several fields like cognitive sciences, adult learning (andragogy), computer science & AI/ML, and instructional design. In our research journey, we start from the answers provided by top professionals from over 40 large companies in Romania to a few questions regarding the current practices in the development of managerial competencies: How do managers in large companies develop professional competencies today? More specifically, how do they acquire knowledge and develop skills and attitudes in the field of Artificial Intelligence? How would managers prefer to carry out training and/or professional development activities?

We ran a 3-month market survey in the period between June 2024 and August 2024. The survey was based on an online questionnaire addressing key respondents from 40 companies with +50 employees, having a national presence, in major industries like: financial services, Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT), professional consulting services, health and pharma, industrial production / automotives, corporate training, and other economic sectors.

The respondents were senior HR professionals or seasoned trainers with longstanding experience and deep understanding of the local corporate training market.
The questionnaire included a number of 9 content questions divided into two categories:
(1) the development of managerial competences in general and
(2) the development of managerial competences in the field of Artificial Intelligence – covering both current practices and desires/preferences related to how these activities could be carried out in the future. To these 9 questions we added a number of 6 questions to help us profile the respondent and the company they represented.

Few of the most notable conclusions of the survey are presented in the paper.

We then propose a set of competencies in the domain of Artificial Intelligence that business management professionals should develop such as to be able to use AI in addressing their role responsibilities more efficiently but also drive adoption of AI in their companies and/or functional domain: in developing an AI competency model for business management professionals, we started from the basic functions of management and then followed an analysis of the tasks (related to the domain of AI) specific to each of the 3 levels of management in scope: top, middle and operational management levels. We could thus identify a set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and other personal characteristics of managers that can help them attain superior performance in fulfilling the duties specific to their role, in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Corresponding to each of the 4 management functions, we propose for discussion a set of activities considered by the author to fall under the responsibility of managers regarding the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in the company (organizational dimension), depending on the specific level of management and the way in which the tasks and responsibilities specific to the role could be performed more efficiently with AI methods and techniques (personal dimension).

Keywords: Management Competencies, AI Competency Framework, Artificial Intelligence (AI).