Through the magic lens: Management, language, and AI

In this essay, we explore management, language, and artificial intelligence (AI). We highlight how management performs generative AI as magic and argue for the continued crucial role of humans under conditions of AI hype. We view language as an essential part of management to impress, to weave the illusion of expertise, and to manufacture our consent. We argue that performing AI as magic brings this into sharp relief, showing how power and ideology in and around AI operate when its advancement is constructed as inevitable. We encourage discussion on this and propose more research on resistance to management performing AI, on the gendered nature of AI and its consequences, and on AI -powered management clones and their language when agentic AI enters the stage. The magic lens offers a fruitful way forward in studying these fundamentally important topics.