Organisational continuity and human-centred AI: Rethinking governance in ageing digital economies

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Digital transformation is often associated with technological sophistication, data availability, automation, and Artificial I ntelligence ( AI)-mediated c oordination. However, organizations may preserve more information while losing the human and institutional capacity to interpret, govern, and use that information over time. This risk is especially relevant for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where tacit knowledge, contextual judgment, and governance memory are often concentrated in experienced professionals. OBJECTIVES: This paper reframes digital transformation as an organizational continuity governance problem. It aims to explain how AI-mediated coordination, demographic aging, distributed work, and concentrated tacit knowledge may generate continuity asymmetry, understood as the gap between increasing technological coordination capacity and insufficient hu man-centered mechanisms fo r preserving interpretive continuity. METHODS: The study develops an integrative conceptual analysis based on selective theoretical synthesis. It connects digital transformation, organizational memory, knowledge transfer and knowledge loss, sociomateriality, human-centered AI, AI governance, aging workforce research, and productive longevity to build a sociomaterial continuity perspective. RESULTS: The paper distinguishes informational continuity from interpretive continuity and conceptualizes experienced professionals as continuity actors who sustain tacit knowledge, relational memory, contextual judgment, and governance understanding across time. It proposes the Sociomaterial Continuity Governance Framework, organized around four mutually reinforcing governance functions: knowledge risk and memory mapping, continuity actors and intergenerational transfer, human oversight of AI-mediated coordination, and modular continuity routines and audits for SMEs. The paper also formulates theoretical propositions to guide future empirical research. CONCLUSION: Sustainable digital transformation depends not only on expanding technological capability, but also on preserving the interpretive conditions through which organizational knowledge remains meaningful, transferable, and governable. The article contributes by positioning organizational continuity as a sociomaterial governance achievement and by offering a conceptual framework for reducing continuity asymmetry in AI-mediated and aging SME environments.