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、约束和战略影响


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，但它也带来了复杂的管理挑战。为了理解 AI 的颠覆性并发挥其潜力，我们对 92 篇以财务审计（所选专业服务领域）为中心的学术著作进行了发展审查。我们借鉴文献资料，应用技术可供性和约束理论（TACT）来剖析人工智能给专业服务带来的机遇和挑战。我们的分析导致了人工智能对审计领域内的个体从业者、公司和专业协会的可供性和限制的概念化。随后，我们将这些与同一领域中典型的非人工智能、经典 IT 工具的可供性和限制进行了比较，突显了人工智能的颠覆性本质。我们的研究结果进一步揭示了人工智能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人工智能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纳入从业者的决策中，为企业提出任务自动化和增强的动态观点，并敦促专业协会建立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，为更细致地讨论在专业服务中利用人工智能的战略意义奠定了基础。