While Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to transform business models and enable novel service propositions, it also ushers in intricate managerial challenges. To comprehend AI’s disruption as well as harness its potential, we conducted a developmental review of 92 scholarly works centred on financial auditing, the chosen professional service domain. Drawing on the corpus of literature, we applied the Technology Affordance and Constraints Theory (TACT) to dissect the opportunities and challenges that AI introduces to professional services. Our analysis led to conceptualising AI’s affordances and constraints for individual practitioners, firms, and professional associations within the auditing domain. Subsequently, we compared these with the affordances and constraints of typical non-AI, classic IT tools in the same domain, highlighting the disruptive essence of AI. Our findings further revealed the reciprocal and tensional relationship between AI affordances and constraints, where actualising AI affordance at the firm level may impose constraints on individual practitioners. Based on our findings, we argue for integrating AI into decision-making by practitioners, propose a dynamic view of task automation and augmentation for firms, and urge an AI-calibrated knowledge system for professional associations. This study contributes to both theory and practice, laying the foundation for a more nuanced discourse on the strategic significance of harnessing AI in professional services.

中文翻译：

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利用人工智能的潜力：专业服务的可供性、限制和战略影响


虽然人工智能 （AI） 有望改变商业模式并实现新颖的服务主张，但它也带来了错综复杂的管理挑战。为了理解人工智能的颠覆性并利用其潜力，我们对 92 篇以财务审计为中心的学术著作进行了发展性审查，财务审计是选定的专业服务领域。借鉴文献语料库，我们应用技术可供性和约束理论 （TACT） 来剖析人工智能为专业服务带来的机遇和挑战。我们的分析导致概念化了 AI 对审计领域内的个人从业者、公司和专业协会的可供性和限制。随后，我们将这些工具与同一领域中典型的非 AI 经典 IT 工具的功能和限制进行了比较，突出了 AI 的颠覆性本质。我们的研究结果进一步揭示了 AI 可供性和约束之间的相互和紧张关系，其中在公司层面实现 AI 可供性可能会对个体从业者施加限制。根据我们的研究结果，我们主张将人工智能整合到从业者的决策中，为公司提出了任务自动化和增强的动态视图，并敦促为专业协会建立一个人工智能校准的知识系统。这项研究对理论和实践都有贡献，为关于在专业服务中利用人工智能的战略意义进行更细致的讨论奠定了基础。