AI technology has developed rapidly across virtually every industrial sector, resulting in an increasing number of organizations that adopt AI coaching technologies for their employees’ professional development. Chatbot coaching (CC) is particularly emerging. Chatbots use conversational, automated software to mimic human conversations, currently based on a combination of algorithms and generative AI. Although CC faces some challenges and concerns (e.g., limited acceptance due to the currently limited capabilities to incorporate the conversation context), CC bears a high potential for workplace coaching. Coaching may become more easily scalable, accessible, and affordable for a broader group of employees, resulting in a stronger organizational impact. Additionally, chatbots can support human coaches, e.g., by facilitating simple, concrete coaching tasks like guiding coaching exercises, and by enriching their own professional development.

To date, the field of AI coaching is in its early stages and facing rapid growth. Consequently, CC research has been limited, primarily consisting of conceptual studies or empirical studies that are mostly conducted as vignette analyses and/or with student samples. Therefore, CC research still needs to incorporate the organizational context: Why and how do organizations use CC instead of, or in addition to  human-led coaching? How effective is CC, and which factors impact its outcomes and successful implementation?

By investigating CC in organizational field settings from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders with a qualitative, longitudinal approach, we advance the much-needed evidence-base for CC as an emerging organizational human resource (HR) development practice. We also advance theory by drawing on and integrating concepts from various streams of the literature, including workplace coaching, training, HR development, media psychology, digital transformation and change, and technology adoption. The input-process-output-context framework of coaching and the differentiation into macro-, meso- and micro-levels guide our empirical analysis.

We conduct approximately 50 semi-structured interviews with CC stakeholders (e.g., project coordinators of the client organization and the CC provider, CC participants) across a range of industries.