AIORG-W007 Peer-reviewed research AI × management and organizations

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

Fabrizio Dell’Acqua · Edward McFowland · Ethan Mollick · Hila Lifshitz · Katherine C. Kellogg · Saran Rajendran · Lisa Krayer · François Candelon · Karim R. Lakhani

Also recorded as: HBS Working Paper 24-013 · Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality · Organization Science DOI 10.1287/orsc.2025.21838 · doi:10.1287/orsc.2025.21838

Organization Science

Recorded claims
4
coded from the inspected source
Evidence classes
3
scholarly-full-text, adverse-or-corrective, crossref-api-metadata
Recorded limitations
8
stated, never hidden

From the hash-bound evidence releases

Recorded claims

Each claim states what the inspected source says, at the recorded location—bounded by its scope and graded by its confidence. Nothing here is a synthesis across works.

For tasks inside the model's capability frontier, AI-assisted consultants completed work more than 25% faster, produced outputs rated more than 40% higher in quality, and completed over 12% more tasks than controls.

confidence: high within study scholarly-full-text apw-r0-seed

Scope: Consultants and the experiment's within-frontier tasks; no direct firm-outcome estimate.

On the task intentionally placed outside the model frontier, AI access made participants less likely to reach the correct answer, demonstrating that average gains reverse when workers misapply the system beyond its reliable task boundary.

confidence: high within study adverse-or-corrective apw-r0-seed

Scope: One designed outside-frontier consulting task and one model era.

The Crossref-deposited abstract reports that AI assistance improved performance on management-consulting tasks within its capability frontier but reduced correctness on a managerial task outside that frontier.

confidence: moderate crossref-api-metadata apw-c1-obot-journals

Scope: abstract-level evidence from a field experiment with knowledge workers

The abstract reports uneven effects of AI assistance across management-consulting knowledge tasks, improving performance within some task boundaries while harming it outside them.

confidence: high crossref-api-metadata apw-c1-obot-journals

Scope: abstract-level

Structured relationships

In-corpus citations

Only source-supplied cites relationships whose two endpoints are admitted are shown. Invocation evidence remains a separate relationship.

Boundaries

Limitations & independence

Recorded at coding time, carried with the work forever. A claim without its limits is not evidence.

Recorded limitations

  • 758 consultants and selected consulting tasks
  • Abstract-level Crossref metadata only; full text was not inspected.
  • Artificially classified inside/outside-frontier tasks
  • Crossref abstract-level metadata only; the publisher surface returned HTTP 403; full text was not inspected
  • Crossref supplied only year and month for the issue publication date
  • One model generation
  • Task quality is not firm financial performance
  • The publisher surface was not queried after the lane’s quarantined dynamic-challenge response; no independent publisher-page verification was attempted.

Source independence

Academic field experiment with BCG consultants; focal professional-services setting and a time-specific model.