“Robots or Humans? The Influence of Benefactor Type on Third Parties Prosocial Behavior”

Department of Management & Organisation

A short report from Shi Bown on his research findings presented in the conference.

Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM 2025)

Dates: 25-29 July 2025
Venue: Bella Centre, Copenhagen, Denmark

I presented a paper titled ““Robots or Humans? The Influence of Benefactor Type on Third Parties Prosocial Behavior”.

Attending the 85th Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting in Copenhagen was a deeply enriching experience that significantly shaped my understanding of current research conversations in management and my place within them. As a third-year PhD student, I came to the conference hoping to learn insights from other scholars, refine my methodological approach, and build intellectual connections—and I left with all of that and more.

One of the most impactful aspects of the conference was the opportunity to sit in on paper sessions where senior scholars presented cutting-edge work on how AI presents bias in our daily life. Unfortunately, four presenters are absent due to official reasons, but I still learned a lot from the session. Douglas Guilbeault presented his work on gendered ageism in social media and workplace AI, which will be published in a top journal soon. He creatively found the association between gender, occupation, and age, such that people and AI believed older men are more competent and likely to have a good job, while for women, a young age (look) is a signal for competence and occupation. Mernyk presented their work about how LLM reduced barriers in American Elections, which showed the potential of LLM improving public political engagement. I found myself taking notes not just on the substance of the research, but on how scholars told the story of their work—how they constructed their contribution, positioned it within the literature, and responded thoughtfully to questions. Observing these interactions gave me a much clearer sense of what constitutes a persuasive academic conversation.

Also in this conference, I could communicate with the top experts in content analysis, agent modelling, and the latent change score model. These hands-on PDWs brought me great improvement in terms of methodology. Additionally, it is also a great experience to present papers in the AOM and communicate with other scholars who focus on similar areas.

I left Copenhagen with a renewed sense of excitement about my research and a clearer understanding of how to communicate my ideas to an engaged scholarly audience. AOM 2025 affirmed for me that scholarship is not just about publishing—it’s about conversation, community, and the continuous exchange of ideas.