Engström et al., 2025 describes what happens when organizations begin experimenting with AI—and why the experience often feels confusing, stuck, or fragmented.

With some help from AI, I did a summary of the article and added some of my thoughts from my background in Polarity Thinking™. This wonderful article was originally published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management (accessible here).

Basically, AI adoption is powered by two core polarities that form what I describe as a *“Multarity™” (See Chapter 42 of “And: How to leverage polarity, paradox, and dilemma, Volume 2, Applications.”)

*Multarity™ – interdependencies of more than two poles, which synergistically contribute to a greater purpose that is more than the sum of the parts.

The authors reveal two core polarities/paradoxes that shape nearly every insight in his AI “Multarity” for Adoption. They are:

Current Reality AND Future Possibility

Human Judgment AND Machine Intelligence

(And, a BONUS polarity is identified at the end to entice you!)

One way to guarantee poor performance and escalating dysfunction, is to misdiagnose the tensions among these two polarities as either/or problems to solve. However, success that can be sustained when leveraging both poles of each polarity, intentionally and continuously for the Greater Purpose of: Early and Effective AI Adoption.

Current Reality AND Future Possibility

(A “Temporal Tension”)

The researchers found that employees experience AI as:

  • a distant aspiration (data not ready, messy systems)
  • an urgent requirement (fear of falling behind competitors)

This is essentially a polarity of the Now AND the Next:

The NOW (Current Capabilities)

  • Limited data quality
  • Early-stage tools
  • Incremental improvements
  • Doubt about readiness

The NEXT (Future Aspirations)

  • Pressure to innovate
  • AI as competitive necessity
  • Vision of transformative potential
  • Fear of missing out

Over-focusing on the NOW → organizational hesitation, stalling, first-order tweaks.
Over-focusing on the NEXT → hype, unrealistic expectations, strategic drift.

The article calls this an “emergent trajectory”—you can’t plan it linearly, and you can’t postpone it until everything is perfect. It’s an ongoing polarity to leverage, not a problem to solve.

Human Judgment AND Machine Intelligence

(A Relational Tension)

Employees oscillate between seeing AI as:

  • a helpful assistant that frees them from drudgery
  • a superpowered force that could replace them

This is the classic Human AND Machine polarity:

HUMAN Strengths

  • Contextual judgment
  • Empathy, ethics, intuition
  • Meaning-making, values
  • Flexibility

MACHINE Strengths

  • Speed
  • Scale
  • Pattern-recognition
  • Consistency

Over-focusing on Human → slow, biased, inconsistent decisions.
Over-focusing on Machine → loss of agency, blind trust, ethical risks.

The article names this the “trust–control balance.”
Organizations want AI to improve decisions AND want humans to stay in charge.
Leveraging both is the key.

Underlying all of this is process of AI Adoption is:

Stability AND Change

(Identity, Belonging, and Organizational Control)

AI simultaneously feels…

  • stable and familiar (“just another tool”), AND
  • frightening and transformative (“a total game-changer”).

This polarity sits beneath the surface:

STABILITY

  • Existing roles
  • Known processes
  • Familiar identities

CHANGE

  • Skill shifts
  • New roles
  • Redefined value and purpose

The article shows employees wrestling with the question: “What will be left for humans?”

Crucially, the article concludes that organizations who succeed with AI do not “solve” these tensions. They can be leveraged by:

  • embracing emergence
  • fostering ethical reflexivity
  • supporting human–machine collaboration
  • encouraging paradoxical thinking

What we offer at Polarity Partnerships, are tools like the Polarity Map™ and 5-Step Process (Seeing, Mapping, Assessing, Learning, and Leveraging) to support leaders, teams, and organizations. And, what organizations measure and track tend to get accomplished — and for that using our customized Polarity Assessment platform may be helpful to integrate into strategy and operations.

If your leaders, teams, and organization needs support for AI Adoption that leverages these polarities — as a Multarity – let’s partner!