Strategies for improving the explainability of artificial agents are a key approach to support the understandability of artificial agents’ decision-making processes and their trustworthiness. However, since explanations are not inclined to standardization, finding solutions that fit the algorithmic-based decision-making processes of artificial agents poses a compelling challenge. This paper addresses the concept of trust in relation to complementary aspects that play a role in interpersonal and human–agent relationships, such as users’ confidence and their perception of artificial agents’ reliability. Particularly, this paper focuses on non-expert users’ perspectives, since users with little technical knowledge are likely to benefit the most from “post-hoc”, everyday explanations. Drawing upon the explainable AI and social sciences literature, this paper investigates how artificial agent’s explainability and trust are interrelated at different stages of an interaction. Specifically, the possibility of implementing explainability as a trust building, trust maintenance and restoration strategy is investigated. To this extent, the paper identifies and discusses the intrinsic limits and fundamental features of explanations, such as structural qualities and communication strategies. Accordingly, this paper contributes to the debate by providing recommendations on how to maximize the effectiveness of explanations for supporting non-expert users’ understanding and trust.

Previous research suggests that the increased attribution of agency to robots may be linked to negative attitudes toward robots. If robots are truly expected to assume various roles in our social environment, it is necessary to further explore how increasing agency, for example through increasing levels of autonomy, affects attitudes toward them. This study investigates the role of perceived control as a moderator explaining attitudes toward attributed agency in a collaboration context. Austrian-based participants ( $$\hbox {N}=102$$N = 102 ) watched a video of a robot collaborating with a person to assemble a mixer—the robot was presented as either agentic and capable of proactively collaborating with the human or non-agentic and only capable of following human commands. The results show that attributing high levels of agency to robots is associated with negative attitudes toward them when individuals perceive low control during the collaboration.

Collaborative industrial robotic arms (cobots) are integrated industrial assembly systems relieving their human coworkers from monotonous tasks and achieving productivity gains. The question of task allocation arises in the organization of these human–robot interactions. State of the art shows static, compensatory task allocation approaches in current assembly systems and flexible, adaptive task sharing (ATS) approaches in human factors research. The latter should exploit the economic and ergonomic advantages of cobot usage. Previous research results did not provide a clear insight into whether industrial workers prefer static or adaptive task allocation and which tasks workers do prefer to assign to cobots. Therefore, we set up a cobot demonstrator with a realistic industrial assembly use case and did a user study with experienced workers from the shop floor (n = 25). The aim of the user study is to provide a systematic understanding and evaluation of workers' preferences in a practical context of human–robot interaction (HRI) in assembly. Our main findings are that participants preferred the ATS concept to a predetermined task allocation and reported increased satisfaction with the allocation. Results show that participants are more likely to give manual tasks to the cobot in contrast to cognitive tasks. It shows that workers do not entrust all tasks to robots, but like to take over cognitive tasks by themselves. This work contributes to the design of human-centered HRI in industrial assembly systems.

People form mental models about robots’ behavior and intention as they interact with them. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of different interaction styles on self-efficacy in human-robot interaction (HRI), people’s perception of the robot, and task engagement. We conducted a user study in which a social robot assists people verbally while building a house of cards. Data from our experimental study revealed that people engaged longer in the task while interacting with a robot that provides person related feedback than with a robot that gives no person or task related feedback. Moreover, people interacting with a robot with a person-oriented interaction style reported a higher self-efficacy in HRI, perceived higher agreeableness of the robot and found the interaction less frustrating, as compared to a robot with a task-oriented interaction style. This suggests that a robot’s interaction style can be considered as a key factor for increasing people’s perceived self-efficacy in HRI, which is essential for establishing trust and enabling Human-robot collaboration.

Recent developments in information and communication technology have led to renewed interest in the impact of flexible work on work-related outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational identification and work engagement. Although there is a vast amount of literature indicating the positive association between job autonomy and work-related outcomes, there has been little discussion about the contextual conditions that strengthen this relationship. This paper analyzes the role of perceived organizational alignment as a conditional factor and shows that autonomy alone cannot explain an organization’s success in improving work-related outcomes. An analysis of online survey from 481 employees shows that the perceived organizational alignment moderates the positive effect of autonomy on work-related outcomes in the context of flexible work. For employees who perceive organizational alignment to be high, the positive relationships are strengthened for work engagement and organizational identification, but attenuated for job satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. Recent developments in information and communication technology have led to renewed interest in the impact of flexible work on work-related outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational identification and work engagement. Although there is a vast amount of literature indicating the positive association between job autonomy and work-related outcomes, there has been little discussion about the contextual conditions that strengthen this relationship. This paper analyzes the role of perceived organizational alignment as a conditional factor and shows that autonomy alone cannot explain an organization’s success in improving work-related outcomes. An analysis of online survey from 481 employees shows that the perceived organizational alignment moderates the positive effect of autonomy on work-related outcomes in the context of flexible work. For employees who perceive organizational alignment to be high, the positive relationships are strengthened for work engagement and organizational identification, but attenuated for job satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. The management revue is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary European journal publishing both qualitative and quantitative work as well as purely theoretical papers that advance the study of management, organisation and industrial relations. The management revue publishes articles that contribute to theory from a number of disciplines, including business and public administration, organizational behavior, economics, sociology and psychology. Reviews of books relevant to management and organisation studies are a regular feature. Special issues provide a unique and rich insight into the issue's research field. The journal offers insights into selected research topics by providing potentially controversial perspectives, new theoretical insights, valuable empirical analyses and brief reviews of key publications. The aim is to establish the management revue as a top quality symposium journal for the international academic community. The journal is available online via the Nomos eLibrary, ABI/INFORM Global and JSTOR. The management revue is indexed in the Web of Science™ Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Elesevier's Scopus and the RePEc services IDEAS and EconPapers.

In the context of smart manufacturing, the technical development of monitoring systems has made it possible to track employees with the same systems that are used to track assets. This study contributes to our understanding of the acceptance of location-based monitoring of employees and investigates how the perceived privacy risk regarding monitoring can be tackled by examining the role of transparency and the perceived value of monitoring. We designed an experimental setting in which students assembled a 3D printer and manipulated transparency with two conditions: a detailed explanation of monitoring during the task vs. monitoring without any explanation. The results show that the higher the privacy concerns and perceived risks were, the lower was the acceptance for monitoring. However, the negative effect of perceived risk diminishes when both, transparency and the value of monitoring are high, but becomes even stronger when only transparency is high and perceived value is low.