Research statement · American University of Ras Al Khaimah

Using AI without losing human capability.

My research examines how organisational relationships and the design of work affect people's wellbeing, contribution and capacity to exercise judgement. My current focus is a management question: how can organisations use AI while preserving human capability, responsibility and meaningful participation?

Dr. Khalid KhanChair, Department of ManagementAssistant Professor of HRMkhan@drkk.biz

30+

Peer-reviewed articles and case studies

Papers in the research pipeline

AED 8,300

Approved AURAK seed grant

22+

Years researching and teaching

01 / Research statement

Research trajectory

My first-author publications address employees' experiences in family firms, remote work and the development of green careers. Recent co-authored research on AI dependency extends these concerns to technology-mediated work. Together, these studies underpin my current focus on how organisations can use AI without eroding the human capabilities on which good judgement depends.

Psychological contracts and trust

My doctoral research at the University of Waikato examined psychological contracts with the organisation, supervisors and peers. Across three studies, it investigated how breaches of obligations relate to citizenship behaviour and satisfaction directed towards different workplace relationships. Its contribution was to distinguish these relationships and examine spillover between them rather than treat the employer as a single, undifferentiated entity. This remains an important foundation for my interest in trust, perceived obligations and responses to organisational change.

Wellbeing, family firms and remote work

My first-author paper on occupational mental health in family firms examined employee–organisation psychological distance, psychological safety and occupational mental health among non-family employees. Combining structural equation modelling with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis allowed us to investigate both relationships between variables and configurations of conditions. A second first-author paper studied 463 remote software-development workers and found that social anxiety was associated with greater psychological distance, but that distance was not associated with burnout in the tested model. Workplace attachment orientation moderated the anxiety–distance relationship, while psychological safety did not. Together these studies support a more differentiated examination of work, attentive to individual experience and the conditions under which work is organised.

Green careers and employment policy

My 2026 book chapter with Abdelfatah Arman and Fady ElBorno connects workforce development with sustainability. It examines green career areas and the training needed to align employability with the UAE's sustainability objectives. The work extends my interest in job design and employee development to the relationship between employment policy and environmental change.

02 / Research statement

AI dependency and academic impact

My recent paper with Muhammad Faisal Malik and Quratulain Burhan, published in the Leadership & Organization Development Journal in 2026, is central to my developing agenda. I am the second author.

The paper examines how reliance on generative AI is associated with cognitive offloading, skill atrophy and digital complacency, bringing these constructs together in an integrated model. The study used a cross-sectional survey of 303 professionals who regularly used generative AI, with confirmatory factor analysis and bootstrapped structural modelling. The model accounted for 36% of the variance in digital complacency.

Its contribution is to connect the benefits of delegating cognitive tasks with a potential organisational cost: reduced capacity or willingness to scrutinise automated outputs. Because the evidence is cross-sectional and self-reported, it supports associations consistent with the proposed pathway, not proof of causal deterioration over time.

The academic relevance of this work lies in connecting HRM and organisational behaviour with questions about automation, learning and managerial oversight. Publications in management, psychology and public-health outlets allow these questions to reach different scholarly audiences. My contribution also includes research capacity building through postgraduate supervision and faculty training in qualitative comparative analysis. I regard these as complementary forms of academic contribution, while distinguishing them from citation-based measures of influence.

Central paper

The double-edged sword of AI dependency

Malik, Khan & Burhan · 2026

Cognitive offloading and skill atrophy as pathways to digital complacency among 303 professionals who regularly use generative AI.

Interpretation note

The evidence is cross-sectional and self-reported. It supports associations consistent with the proposed pathway, not proof of causal deterioration over time. The next stage of the programme is designed to test these relationships longitudinally and experimentally.

03 / Research statement

Future research programme

My next research priority is human–AI teaming and responsible task allocation: when work should remain human-led, when AI can appropriately take the lead, and when a combined arrangement is preferable.

Task allocation involves questions of uncertainty, contextual judgement, explainability and risk, as well as technical performance. For HRM, it also changes job content, skill requirements and accountability. The programme is designed to compare human, AI and hybrid allocation pathways, connect HRM, organisational behaviour and AI-related management research, and develop external funding proposals from the initial project. The objective is a coherent programme that explains how organisations can distribute work and responsibility without losing the human capabilities on which effective oversight depends.

A next step would be to develop and test task-classification approaches against human-only, AI-only and rule-based alternatives. Building on the dependency paper's limitations, I would also seek longitudinal and experimental evidence on skill maintenance, verification and decision quality. These are proposed directions for developing the programme, rather than completed studies.

My current manuscript pipeline complements this agenda. Revisions have been submitted on digital leadership and organisational performance, workplace relationships and knowledge sharing, and AI awareness and employee performance. Other manuscripts listed as under review address algorithmic résumé anxiety, AI implementation and withdrawal behaviour, and AI perceptions, learning demands and professional efficacy. These remain submissions, not accepted publications.

Principal Investigator · 2027

Developing an Evidence-Based Online HR Task Bank Prototype for Responsible AI Task Allocation and Job Redesign

AURAK seed grant · BUSN/002/27 · AED 8,300

The agreement lists academic collaborators and Zand Bank PJSC. The project is intended to support the development of a prototype; it is not yet evidence of a validated allocation system or completed organisational deployment.

Research capacity

Postgraduate supervision and faculty training in qualitative comparative analysis are complementary forms of academic contribution. They build the capability to ask better questions, design stronger studies and interpret evidence with care.

04 / Research statement

Service and societal engagement

My service connects research and teaching with the quality of the department, the programmes we offer and the organisations we work with.

Department and university

Chair of the Department of Management, contributing to educational quality, faculty support and programme development.
Recruitment support during faculty turnover, oversight of adjunct faculty, and contributions to the Entrepreneurship concentration and the one-year MBA.
Unit Responsible Person for BSBA and MBA Strategy-to-Action reporting, tracking projects and performance indicators against institutional priorities.
Committee service across curriculum development, programme assessment, AACSB, faculty recruitment and integration, and the Dean's Council.
Supported colleagues in exploring responsible uses of AI in academic work.
The Dean's and Provost's completed reviews recognise these contributions and identify administrative detail and consistency in assessment and grading as areas for continuing improvement.
Student advising, completed undergraduate and master's supervision, and doctoral co-supervision. Earlier roles at Federal Urdu University included Director of Student Affairs and Head of the Islamabad Campus.

Practice and public engagement

I have delivered executive training in digital transformation, innovation, remote working and the Internet of Things for participants from Pakistan Telecommunication Limited, Pakistan MNP Database, Oxfam and National Telecom Cooperation. These activities translate management and technology concepts into questions participants encounter in their work.

My project-based HR consulting included restructuring assignments for the World Bank-funded Punjab Small Industries Corporation programme and the WHO-sponsored Expanded Program on Immunization. My responsibilities concerned role design, workforce planning and change-management deliverables. These experiences inform my attention to implementation and organisational context; they do not establish that my published research caused particular policy or performance outcomes.

Scholarship and practice

The Zand Bank partnership and the new seed-funded project provide a route for further exchange between scholarship and practice. The intended contribution is to help organisations make more responsible decisions about AI delegation, human oversight and job redesign. My first-author work on wellbeing, remote work and green careers adds a wider concern: organisational change should be examined in terms of its consequences for people, their opportunities and their ability to contribute.

05 / Research statement

Selected publications

Four papers and chapters that frame the programme, with links to the published work.

DOI ↗

Khan, K., e Habiba, U., Sabeen, Z., & Waseem, M. (2022). Occupational mental health of non-family members in family firms: Evidence from Pakistan. Frontiers in Public Health, 10, 961553.

Brings the experience of non-family employees into discussions of family-firm employment and highlights psychological safety as a mechanism relevant to their wellbeing.

DOI ↗

Khan, K., e-Habiba, U., Aziz, S., Sabeen, Z., Zeeshan, A., Naz, Z., & Waseem, M. (2024). Remote work arrangement: A blessing in disguise for socially anxious individuals. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1152499.

Questions the assumption that greater interpersonal distance necessarily has the same consequences for all workers.

DOI ↗

Khan, K., Arman, A., & ElBorno, F. (2026). Leveraging Emiratization for green careers: A pathway to achieving UAE's sustainability goals. In Leadership, Innovation, and Responsibility in Global Business (pp. 169–178). Springer.

Connects workforce development and employability with the UAE's sustainability objectives.

DOI ↗

Malik, M. F., Khan, K., & Burhan, Q. (2026). The double-edged sword of AI dependency: How cognitive offloading and skill atrophy foster digital complacency. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.

Links the benefits of delegating cognitive tasks to the risk of reduced capacity or willingness to scrutinise automated outputs.

06 / Research statement

Research pipeline

Published, revised and under-review work. Rankings follow ABS 2024, ABDC 2025 and Scopus-based SJR 2025 best subject quartile; SJR is distinct from CiteScore quartiles.

Paper	Status	Ranking
Justice and Leadership as Precursors to OCB: A Time-Lagged Study of Fairness, Well-being, and EthicsInternational Journal of Ethics and Systems	Published	ABS not listed · ABDC C · SJR Q1
The Double-Edged Sword of AI Dependency: How Cognitive Offloading and Skill Atrophy Foster Digital ComplacencyLeadership & Organization Development Journal	Published	ABS 1 · ABDC B · SJR Q1
Unpacking the Black Box: Digital Leadership Drives Organization Performance through BPM Capabilities and Process Ambidexterity. Moderating Role of Digital MaturityLeadership & Organization Development Journal	Revision submitted	ABS 1 · ABDC B · SJR Q1
Making Bonds: The Power of Workplace Relationships in Knowledge Sharing DynamicsVINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems	Revision submitted	ABS not listed · ABDC B · SJR Q1
From AI Awareness to Employee Performance: A Dual Pathway Model of Work Design in AI Enabled OrganizationsJournal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance	Revision submitted	ABS 2 · ABDC B · SJR Q2
I Am Not Good Enough: The Cost of Internalized Inadequacy, Development and Validation of the Workplace Self-Objectification Scale (WSOS)Personnel Review	Under review	ABS 2 · ABDC A · SJR Q1
The Cultural Enigma: How Cultural Plasticity Shapes Cross-Cultural Innovative Behavior through Sequential MediationInternational Journal of Cross Cultural Management	Under review	ABS 1 · ABDC B · SJR Q1
The Impact of Impression Management on Perceived Promotability, Unveiling the Mediating Mechanisms of Likeability, Credibility, Trust, and RespectRAUSP Management Journal	Under review	ABS 1 · ABDC not listed · SJR Q2
Algorithmic Resume Anxiety: Self-Reported Prevalence, a Structural Model, and the Effect of ATS Transparency DisclosuresInternational Journal of Selection and Assessment	Under review	ABS 2 · ABDC A · SJR Q1
Does Task Conflict Transmit Technological Threat? A Multilevel Study of AI Implementation, AI Anxiety and Withdrawal BehaviorInternational Journal of Conflict Management	Under review	ABS 2 · ABDC A · SJR Q1
Unleashing the Leadership Alchemy: Servant Leadership, Employee Engagement and Discretionary Employee Behaviors: A Multilevel StudyManagement Decision	Under review	ABS 2 · ABDC B · SJR Q1
From Stressor to Springboard: How Perception of Artificial Intelligence Builds Professional Efficacy through Learning Demand and Skills DevelopmentEuropean Journal of Management and Business Economics	Under review	ABS 2 · ABDC B · SJR Q1