Research
HAIbrid Workforce Management research follows strict evidence guidelines: every authoritative or copyrighted source is cited wherever its work is stated, referenced or used as evidence in an analysis. The same sources also serve as guidance and guardrails in the working context of our AI co-workers, with their citations preserved, so AI-assisted work stays traceable to its evidence.
The full list follows, grouped by topic. You may find some of these sources useful in your own work.
References
Transformations and Recessions
How organizations transform, and how leaders roar out of downturns rather than retreat, including Rewired and the sources behind our AI Strategy kit.
Gulati, Ranjay, Nitin Nohria, and Franz Wohlgezogen, “Roaring Out of Recession,” Harvard Business Review 88, no. 3 (March 2010): 62–69. ©2010 President & Fellows of Harvard.
Lamarre, Eric, Kate Smaje, and Rodney Zemmel, “Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI,” Wiley, ©2023.
Lamarre, Eric, Kate Smaje, and Rob Levin, with Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky, Rewired: McKinsey’s Playbook on How Leading Companies Win with Technology and AI, Revised and Expanded Second Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, ©2026 McKinsey & Company. ISBN 9781394381906 (cloth); 9781394381913 (ePUB); 9781394381920 (ePDF).
Section, “AI Strategy Playbook,” Section / The AI Strategy Summit, March 2026.
Mischke, Jan, Chris Bradley, Olivia White, Guillaume Dagorret, Sven Smit, Dymfke Kuijpers, Charles Atkins, and Ishaa Sandhu, “The power of one: How standout firms grow national productivity,” McKinsey Global Institute, ©2025 McKinsey & Company, May 2025.
Kim, Gene, and Steven J. Spear, “Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness Through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification,” IT Revolution Press, ©2023 Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear.
Rometty, Ginni, “Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World,” Harvard Business Review Press, ©2023 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Maor, Dana, Alexis Krivkovich, Patrick Guggenberger, Damian Klingler, Michael Anzenhofer, et al., “The State of Organizations 2026,” McKinsey & Company, ©2026 McKinsey & Company, February 2026. 74 pages. [State of Organizations Survey fielded June–September 2025; n = 10,018 leaders and managers at organizations of 1,000+ employees; 16 countries; 17 industries. Second edition; the first was published 2023.]
EY Global, “Can Disciplined Ambition Unlock Growth in a Volatile Global Economy?” The CEO Imperative Series — EY Global CEO Outlook Survey, Ernst & Young Global Limited, May 2026. [Fielded mid-March through April 2026; respondents segmented by revenue: <US$500m 20% · US$500m–999.9m 20% · US$1b–4.9b 30% · >US$5b 30%.]
Weddle, Brooke, Deepak Mahadevan, Richard Steele, and Tom Welchman, with Laura Pineault and Marie Bäckström Twallin, “The key to AI value is hiding in plain sight: Your operating model,” McKinsey Quarterly, McKinsey & Company, September 2026. (14 pp.).
AI Adopters
Who is pushing AI into production, what they are learning, and why most AI pilots still fail to reach the bottom line.
Challapally, Aditya, Chris Pease, Ramesh Raskar, and Pradyumna Chari, “The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025,” MIT NANDA (Project NANDA), ©2025 MIT NANDA, July 2025. [Preliminary findings. Research period January–June 2025; 300+ initiatives reviewed, 52 structured interviews, 153 senior-leader surveys.]
Singla, Alex, Alexander Sukharevsky, Bryce Hall, Lareina Yee, and Michael Chui, with Tara Balakrishnan, “The State of AI in 2025: Agents, Innovation, and Transformation,” McKinsey & Company / QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, ©2025 McKinsey & Company.
Rowan, Jim, Nitin Mittal, Beena Ammanath, and Costi Perricos, “State of AI in the Enterprise: The Untapped Edge,” Deloitte AI Institute, ©2026 Deloitte Development LLC, January 2026. [Survey of 3,235 senior leaders, August–September 2025, 24 countries.]
AtScale, “What Actually Changed in 2025 and Why It Redefined the Semantic Layer,” AtScale, ©2026 AtScale, Inc., January 15, 2026.
Dinlersoz, Emin, Principal Economist, Center for Economic Studies (CES), “Measuring AI Use by U.S. Businesses,” US Census Bureau, Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC), December 13, 2024.
Su, Ruoyu, Matteo Esposito, Roberta Capuano, Rafiullah Omar, June Sallou, Henry Muccini, and Davide Taibi, “Making Sense of AI Agents Hype: Adoption, Architectures, and Takeaways From Practitioners,” IEEE Software 43, no. 5 (September/October 2026): 38–46. ©2026 The Authors. DOI: 10.1109/MS.2026.3680431.
Colletta, Jen, “Building an AI-Native Workforce: West Monroe’s 95% Adoption Story,” HR Executive, ©2026 Arc, September 25, 2026. [Q&A interview with Tanya Moore, Chief People Officer, West Monroe; “Insights from a CHRO” column.]
OpenAI, “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First,” OpenAI, April 2026.
Burleigh, Emily, “As AI Wipes Out Desk Jobs, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser Says the Company Is Training 175,000 Employees to ‘Reinvent Themselves’ Before Their Roles Change Forever,” Fortune, ©2026 Fortune Media IP Limited, January 27, 2026.
Au-Yeung, Angel, “The AI Price War Is Heating Up—and OpenAI Is Gaining Ground on Anthropic,” The Wall Street Journal, ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc., October 7, 2026.
Tinkoff, Dan, Lieven Van der Veken, and Michael Chui, with Tara Balakrishnan, “The state of AI in 2026: On the road to ROI,” McKinsey & Company (QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey), August 25, 2026. 31 pp. [McKinsey Global Survey on the state of AI; online, May 4–June 8, 2026; n=1,719 in 97 nations; weighted by national share of global GDP; 36% from organizations with >$1B revenue.]
Harvard Project on Workforce, Alexander Bick, and Adam Blandin, “GenAI Adoption Tracker,” data through May 2026 (retrieved August 24, 2026). [Real-Time Population Survey (RPS), nationally representative online survey of U.S. adults 18–64; 8 waves Aug 2024–May 2026; ~40,000 respondents. Method paper: Bick, Alexander, Adam Blandin, and David J. Deming, “The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI,” Management Science (2026), Funded by Walmart; supported in part by the HBS AI Institute.]
Anthropic PBC, “The 2026 State of AI Agents Report,” Anthropic, ©2026. 48 pp. [Survey with Material of “over 500” U.S. technical leaders across company sizes and industries, “late 2025”; landing page titled “The Enterprise AI Transformation Guide”; gated download.]
Databricks, Inc., “State of AI Agents” (2026 State of AI Agents report), Databricks, ©2026. 31 pp. [Gated e-book, announced in Marwah, Kunal, Mason Force, and Ram Murali, “Enterprise AI agent trends: Top use cases, governance + evaluations and more,” Databricks Blog, January 27, 2026. Anonymized platform telemetry from 20,000+ Databricks customer organizations, November 1, 2024–October 31, 2025.]
Lin, Belle, “Companies Have a New AI Problem: Too Many Agents,” The Wall Street Journal (CIO Journal), ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc., May 15, 2026.
Workforce Stats
Layoffs, hiring, retention, attitudes toward AI, compensation, labor participation, and the mid-manager squeeze.
Lin, Luona, and Kim Parker, (2025, February). “U.S. Workers Are More Worried Than Hopeful About Future AI Use in the Workplace.” Pew Research Center. [Survey conducted October 7–13, 2024; n=5,273 employed U.S. adults.]
Lin, Luona, and Kim Parker, “Employment Is Rising Most Rapidly in Jobs Most in Need of Social, Fundamental and Analytical Skills,” Pew Research Center, January 30, 2020.
Randstad N.V., “Randstad Workmonitor 2026: The Great Workforce Adaptation,” ©2026 Randstad N.V., January 2026.
Nelms, Danny, et al., (2026). “2026 Retention Report: Employee Turnover Insights and Trends in 2025.” Work Institute. [Data: 15,424 exit interviews conducted in 2025; 120,000+ over 2020–2025 across 175+ organizations; ~60% healthcare, ~40% cross-industry; AI section co-authored with Millan, Q4 2025 survey]
Smith, Ray A., “Why Are Managers So Miserable at Work?” The Wall Street Journal, ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, July 25, 2025.
Hanson, Andrew R., “Entry-Level Hiring in the AI Era: What Employers Are Thinking (and Doing),” Strada Institute for the Future of Work, ©2026 Strada Institute for the Future of Work.
Mercer, “Global Talent Trends 2026,” Mercer / Marsh McLennan, ©2026 Mercer LLC.
Mercer, “QuickPulse™ US Compensation Planning Survey,” Mercer / Marsh McLennan, ©2025–2026 Mercer LLC. [Two waves: October 2025 (2026 planning year) and July 2026 (2027 planning year).]
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Situation” (released July 2, 2026; June 2026 reference month), and US Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, “Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report”.
Hornstein, Andreas, Marianna Kudlyak, Sanjana Avaradi, and Cindy Kim, “How Labor Force Participation Has Diverged Across Genders,” FRBSF Economic Letter 2026-15, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, June 1, 2026.
Hulatt, Jack, Digital PR & Data Specialist, “2026 Hiring Trends Report: AI, Ghost Jobs, and the New Rules of Getting Hired,” Resume Genius, July 28, 2026.
Lichtenberg, Nick, “Millennials are officially the majority of managers—so get ready for a combination of burnout, buddy vibes, and boundary issues,” Fortune, July 23, 2025. [Reports Glassdoor Worklife Trends analysis by lead economist Daniel Zhao. Fortune discloses generative-AI assistance on the initial draft, with editor verification.]
Economic Stats
Recession definitions, Federal Reserve and Jackson Hole commentary, job-market revisions, household income, and market conditions.
Grossman, Michael, Drew Dougherty, and Justin Lahart, “What Sweeping Revisions and a Blowout Month Tell Us About the U.S. Job Market: From the Biden to Trump Economies, Healthcare Keeps Surging,” The Wall Street Journal, ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc., February 12, 2026.
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), “Defining Recession,” as published on Congress.gov.
Federal Reserve Board, “Speech by Chair Powell on the Economic Outlook and Framework Review,” Federal Reserve Board of Governors, August 22, 2025.
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, “Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to Host Annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium Aug. 21–23,” news release, August 19, 2025.
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, “Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium: Labor Markets in Transition — Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy,” 2025.
Saraiva, Catarina, “Key Takeaways from the Fed’s Annual Jackson Hole Conference,” Bloomberg, ©2025 Bloomberg L.P., August 23, 2025.
Saraiva, Catarina, Jana Randow, and Amara Omeokwe, “Fed’s Jackson Hole Exposes Hard Road Ahead for Central Bankers,” Bloomberg, ©2025 Bloomberg L.P., August 24, 2025.
Roytburg, Eva, “America’s Job Growth Has Flatlined—and Mark Zandi Believes June May Have Been the Start of a Recession,” Fortune, ©2025 Fortune Media IP Limited, September 5, 2025.
U.S. Census Bureau, “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2025,” U.S. Census Bureau, News Release CB26-151, September 15, 2026.
George, David, “State of Markets II,” Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), September 30, 2026.
Skills, Upskilling and Work Redesign
Deriving skills from the work itself: skills-powered organizations, job redesign, AI fluency and proficiency, behavior change, and how people learn.
Jesuthasan, Ravin, and Tanuj Kapilashrami, “The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise,” The MIT Press, ©2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jesuthasan, Ravin, and John W. Boudreau, “Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work,” Harvard Business Review Press, ©2018 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Lin, Luona, and Kim Parker, “In a Technology-Driven Era, Social and Fundamental Skills Still Reign Supreme Within Occupations,” Pew Research Center, January 30, 2020.
Jesuthasan, Ravin, “Want AI-Driven Productivity? Redesign Work,” MIT Sloan Management Review, ©May 2025.
Mercer, “2025/2026 Skills Snapshot Survey Report: Where Skills Strategy Meets Business Impact,” Mercer / Marsh McLennan, ©2026 Marsh. [Fifth annual edition; n=1,077 talent, rewards and HR leaders across 72 countries; 63% for-profit multinational; 27% at 10,000+ employees.]
Hancock, Bryan, with Charlotte Seiler, “Building Expertise in the Age of AI: Who Trains the Next Generation?” McKinsey & Company, People & Organizational Performance Practice, July 2026. 11 pages.
Lau, Jessica, “How to Measure Your AI Fluency — and Move to the Next Level,” Zapier, February 2, 2026.
Karimova, N. S., and S. Z. Mamarajabova, (2024). “Enhancing Language Learning Through Multimodal Pedagogy: Integrating Verbal, Visual and Gestural Modes.” In Proceedings of the International Scientific and Practical Conference “Methodology of Teaching Foreign Languages – Innovations, Traditions, Problems and Their Solutions” (pp. 193–196). Zenodo.
Mercer, “Value Unleashed: The New Rules of Job Architecture — Redesigning Job Architecture for the Modern Workforce to Power Agility with Skills and Drive Pay Equity,” Mercer (Marsh McLennan), ©2026 Mercer LLC.
Section, The AI Proficiency Report, June 2026 (with a letter from Greg Shove, CEO).
Voelkel, Jan G., Katherine L. Milkman, and Angela L. Duckworth, “Behavior Change,” Annual Review of Psychology 78 (2027): 5.1–5.28. Review in Advance.
AI Trust, Security and Governance
Keeping AI workers reliable and safe: agent drift, threat reports, zero trust, AI risk and cybersecurity frameworks, and agentic-AI guidance.
Masood, Adnan, PhD., “Agent Drift: The Reliability Blind Spot in Multi-Agent LLM Systems — and a Blueprint to Measure It,” Medium, January 9, 2026.
Rath, Abhishek, “Agent Drift: Quantifying Behavioral Degradation in Multi-Agent LLM Systems Over Extended Interactions,” arXiv:2601.04170, January 8, 2026.
CrowdStrike, Inc., “Global Threat Report 2026,” © 2026 CrowdStrike, Inc.
Cloud Security Alliance AI Safety Initiative, “Five Eyes Agentic AI Guidance: Enterprise Compliance Baseline,” CSA Labs / CSAI Foundation, May 4, 2026 (page modified May 20, 2026; current PDF v2).
Ebert, Christof, and Alan M. Davis, “Software Principles,” IEEE Software 41, no. 2 (March/April 2024): 21–27. DOI: 10.1109/MS.2023.3343184.
Hutson, Matthew, “Cybersecurity in the AI Era: Threats, Misconceptions, and the Future of Defensive Technologies,” IEEE Computer Society, 2026. [Running article title: “AI for Cybersecurity Defense”; twelve-page report, article pp. 3–11; exact publication day not stated.]
National Institute of Standards and Technology, “Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0),” NIST AI 100-1, U.S. Department of Commerce, January 2023.
Rose, Scott, Oliver Borchert, Stu Mitchell, and Sean Connelly, “Zero Trust Architecture,” NIST Special Publication 800-207, National Institute of Standards and Technology, August 2020.
Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, National Security Agency, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre, and UK National Cyber Security Centre, “Careful Adoption of Agentic AI Services,” joint guidance, © Commonwealth of Australia, CC BY 4.0, May 1, 2026.
National Institute of Standards and Technology, “The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0,” NIST Cybersecurity White Paper (CSWP) 29, U.S. Department of Commerce, February 26, 2024.
Cloud Security Alliance, “AI Controls Matrix (AICM) v1.1,” Security Controls Catalog working group, released June 22, 2026.
Cloud Security Alliance, “Zero Trust Program Management Guidance: Planning, Implementing, and Sustaining Zero Trust in the Enterprise,” released September 8, 2026.
Cloud Security Alliance, “Zero Trust Microsegmentation Guidance: An Enhanced Security Strategy for Modern IT and OT Environments,” released September 8, 2026.
Management Systems and Process Standards
Process, value-stream and capability standards, and the management thinkers, Deming and Goldratt, behind how we design and improve work.
Object Management Group, “Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), Version 2.0.2,” OMG Document formal/13-12-09, January 2014.
Workflow Management Coalition, “Terminology & Glossary,” Document Number WFMC-TC-1011, Issue 2.0, June 1996. [Archived copy hosted by the University of Edinburgh AIAI.]
Lean Enterprise Institute, “Value Stream Mapping,” Lean Lexicon term, page last modified September 8, 2022.
Scaled Agile, Inc., “Operational Value Streams (OVS),” SAFe Glossary.
Burton, Betsy, “Canadian International Development Agency Uses Business Capability Modeling to Guide Modernization,” Gartner, Inc., research note G00225738, December 29, 2011.
Goldratt, Eliyahu M., “Letter to members #5 — The solution (continued),” Eli Letters, POOGI forum, September 1999. Goldratt’s Marketing Group.
Bellows, Bill, “In Search of Excellence,” The W. Edwards Deming Institute (blog), October 30, 2018.
The W. Edwards Deming Institute, “Dr. Deming’s 14 Points for Management.” [Reproduces the 14 Points citing Deming, W. Edwards, Out of the Crisis (MIT Press), pp. 23-24.]
The W. Edwards Deming Institute, “The Deming System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK).” [Quotes Deming, The New Economics, ch. 4.]
The W. Edwards Deming Institute, “PDSA Cycle.”
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