AI IN THE BOARDROOM: DIRECTOR SENSEMAKING IN UKRAINIAN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
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Date
2026
Authors
Skorupych, Artem
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Abstract
While artificial intelligence increasingly influences organizational decision-making, how corporate board directors make sense of AI for governance purposes remains underexplored, particularly in non-Western and high-stress contexts. This study investigates three questions: how boards currently engage with AI, how board composition and organizational context shape directors' perspectives, and what governance practices directors identify as necessary for responsible adoption. Using a qualitative design, the research collected data through semi-structured interviews (n=5) and written qualitative surveys (n=17) with Ukrainian board directors across banking, technology, energy, healthcare, and other sectors. Analysis followed
Gioia-inspired methodology, progressing from first-order concepts through interpretive themes to aggregate theoretical dimensions. Findings reveal directors hold a dialectical understanding of AI—simultaneously recognizing its potential to address cognitive constraints (information overload, backward focus, data fragmentation) while creating governance risks (explanation difficulties, accountability ambiguity, judgment erosion). Board composition, particularly the mix of technical and traditional expertise, systematically shapes these perspectives, while Ukrainian wartime conditions create paradoxical pressures making AI both more urgent and more risky. Directors converge on governance practices emphasizing human-in-the-loop principles, formal frameworks, transparency, and director capability-building. The study contributes to bounded rationality, upper echelons, and socio-technical systems theories while demonstrating how extreme contexts function as theoretical microscopes, revealing dynamics relevant to boards globally.
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Keywords
corporate governance, artificial intelligence, board directors, sensemaking, bounded rationality, Ukraine
Citation
Skorupych, A. (2026). AI IN THE BOARDROOM: DIRECTOR SENSEMAKING IN UKRAINIAN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE. Kyiv: American University Kyiv. URI: