Chris­ti­an Huber on Col­lab­or­a­tion and AI

Christian Huber is an Associate Professor of Management Accounting and Supply Chain Management at Copenhagen Business School’s Department of Operations Management. His research examines how leaders guide entire organisations – how they make decisions, communicate across boundaries, and use management tools to navigate complexity. As a scholar of management accounting, Christian is less concerned with whether data systems are perfectly accurate than with how leaders use them to create meaningful dialogue. “Data should not only inform decisions,” he explains, “but facilitate conversations about what our business model and purpose really are.” In his work, he studies how numbers and narratives interact, shaping the way organisations think, act, and adapt. 

For Christian, the rise of artificial intelligence represents a fundamental shift in leadership practice. Management control systems were once built on structured, traditional data sources such as enterprise resource planning systems. Now, leaders have access to far more information – and to technologies capable of interpreting it. “AI changes the relationship between leaders and experts,” he notes. “Leaders can now involve AI before decision-making, using it to explore possibilities and test assumptions.” Yet this also creates new dilemmas around ethics, data transparency, and how decisions are justified. According to Christian, the task for leaders is to harness these technologies responsibly, balancing the potential of AI with the values and boundaries that define sound judgment. 

Collaboration, in his view, is a central skill for modern leadership. Today’s challenges – from climate change to global supply chain disruptions – cannot be solved by one discipline alone. “If you tackle carbon, for example, you need environmental engineers, procurement specialists, accountants, and strategists to work together,” he says. Leaders must therefore create environments where diverse experts can collaborate, question assumptions, and co-create solutions. Organisations have become more fluid, with experts moving across functions rather than operating within rigid hierarchies. “Even public bureaucracies,” he observes, “now organise work around emerging challenges rather than fixed roles.” This requires leaders not only to direct but also to help their teams identify what matters most – a shift from command to coordination, from control to facilitation. 

Christian’s reflections also extend beyond the organisation itself. Effective leadership, he argues, now depends on managing ecosystems that include suppliers, partners, and even public institutions. “It’s not just about managing your employees,” he explains. “You need to incorporate the entire supply chain.” His research on carbon accounting illustrates this evolution: what once centred on compliance and reporting has become a question of transformation – how companies can redesign business models to find both economic and ecological value in the green transition. For Christian, the ability to act and react to change has become the defining feature of resilient organisations. “Our world is politically, economically, and ecologically uncertain,” he says. “The capacity to learn and adapt is what sets successful organisations apart.” 

Christian Huber’s work captures a core insight shared by the CBS Leadership Centre: that leadership today is less about control and more about connection – between data and dialogue, between ethics and innovation, and between organisations and the societies they serve. In an age of rapid technological and environmental change, the leaders who thrive are those who can unite these forces with clarity, collaboration, and courage.