Case Study on Applicability of Artificial Intelligence for IT Service Project Managers with Multi Value Systems in the Digital Transformation Era

The lead author has in this decade been studying the processes of creating and transferring multinational IT service knowledge among the headquarters of a global IT Service firm in Japan and the firm’s local subsidiaries in China and APAC regions. Key findings of the preceding studies are, (1) the average of Project Managers’ skill level in China and APAC regions has already reached to the global average determined in the standardized PM skill assessment within the global firm. (2) IT service project managers’ value systems are highly influenced by those of organization the PMs belong to, and the value systems vary not only by nations but also by industries. (3) To transfer knowledge from HQ to overseas subsidiaries in China and APAC regions, especially in the case that the knowledge to be transferred is extremely new and unfamiliar to the knowledge transferees (i.e., local PMs), it is better for the knowledge transferrers from HQs to consider the differences between the value systems of the transferrer and the transferee.

In this paper, the author describes the case-studies with interviews of service project managers in the IT service, aerospace, and construction industries who could use or avoid AI to use for their own projects and have opinions on the AI technology for them. And the author’s objective is to distinguish the applicable and non-applicable AI functions for professional service managers by evaluating the comments of the service project managers. Also, assuming similarity of the knowledge-creating process among project managers in a multinational environment to the process among human PMs and AIs, as the teaming with unfamiliar partners, the author introduced an extended SECI model to explain the needs for considering the sub-process to connect the major four processes in between “Ba”, the knowledge creating field in the SECI model. And referring to the updated technological information, the author considers the possible further research.