In This Era of Artificial Intelligence: Effects on Human Resource Management Practices and Intrapreneurship in MNCs in Cameroon

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has created panic within organizations in various aspects of human resource management (HRM) practices and intrapreneurship. With the current and future dominance of AI in organizations, this paper aims to study the effects of artificial intelligence on human resource management practices and intrapreneurship. A qualitative approach with inductive reasoning was employed, targeting regional HR managers of multinational companies (MNCs) operating in Cameroon in different domains of activity. Three regional human resource managers participated in the interviews. The results were obtained through manual thematic analyses, as it showed great effects of AI on time economy in executing administrative tasks and workers’ innovation by 75%, usage of human resource management software and workers’ proactiveness (88.89%), and enhanced employee engagement and willingness to take calculated risks (93.34%). Besides these main factors, subsidiary factors came up too, influenced by AI, which are task-automation (94.45%) and procedure-digitalization (50%). This study is limited only to MNCs operating outside crisis zones in the country. Therefore, corporations should avoid making their workers overly dependent on AI, taking into consideration situations of AI breakdown, as many tasks necessitate human intelligence to maintain intellectual autonomy. Otherwise, we risk creating automated workers without “common sense.”