Executive Judgement in AI-Mediated Decision-Making Environments: A Process Theory of Formation, Qualification Attrition and Authorisation

Abstract: Generative artificial intelligence can contribute to the representations, alternatives and evaluations through which executive judgements are formed. Existing research already explains important aspects of hybrid cognition, reliance, managerial agency and accountability. This article develops a narrower process challenge: locally competent human and AI contributions can still culminate in an inadequately warranted organisational commitment when established operational assumptions, uncertainties or dependencies are lost or transformed before authorisation. It proposes qualification attrition as the process through which such epistemically consequential content is weakened across successive transformations, and a formation--authorisation gap as the resulting discrepancy between the grounds required for warranted commitment and those that remain accessible, intelligible and challengeable to the authorising role. Executive judgement governance is defined through four dimensions: boundary setting, interpretive challenge, reliance calibration, and authorisation with answerability. Four propositions connect transformation, qualification attrition and governance arrangements to epistemic risk, accountability risk and judgement quality. The contribution is an integrative process theory of how distributed judgement formation can fail as a composition even where individual contributions, local reliance decisions and formal accountability arrangements appear competent.