Executive AI Literacy: A Text-Mining Approach to Understand Existing and Demanded AI Skills of Leaders in Unicorn Firms

Marc Pinski (), Thomas Hofmann () and Alexander Benlian ()
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Marc Pinski: Technical University of Darmstadt, Information Systems and Electronic Services
Thomas Hofmann: Technical University of Darmstadt, Information Systems and Electronic Services
Alexander Benlian: Technical University of Darmstadt, Information Systems and Electronic Services

A chapter in Transforming the Digitally Sustainable Enterprise, 2025, pp 219-235 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Despite the growing relevance of artificial intelligence (AI) for businesses, there is a lack of research on how top-level executives must be skilled in AI. Drawing on upper echelons theory, this paper explores executive AI literacy, defined as the combined AI skills of top-level executives, and its relevance for different executive roles. We conducted a text-mining analysis of 1625 executives’ online profiles and 1033 executive job postings from unicorn firms retrieved via web-scraping from an online professional social network. We find that AI skills are mostly required in product-related executive roles (vs. administrative roles). Thus, we provide an AI-specific perspective complementing prior information systems research on executives, which asserts that (non-AI) IT is driven by administrative executive roles. Our paper contributes to AI literacy literature by shedding light on the substance of executive AI literacy within firms. Lastly, we provide implications for AI-related information systems strategy.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; AI skills; Upper echelons; Executive roles; IS stratessgy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:lnichp:978-3-031-80125-9_13

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-80125-9_13

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