This is fabulous. It makes me speechless as to why this true and not surprising at all.

My quick theory is that deep down we are social animals and a lot of our 'management' decisions stem from this part of us. Not from wanting to rationally and technically solve problems. For example, many 'higher' animals have pecking orders. We have too. On the other hand, we are capable of rationality after all. But we will have to be much more honest with ourselves of what we are. Maybe a lot of human development in history is about escaping our limits. Which is not to say that we should negate or supress them.

There is tons of studies on mismanagement in organisations (state down to enterprises) but this article nails it.

My guess why people would prefer machine to human boss is sense that it will be fair and not biased (if built properly) Here is one older article that touches this topic http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628945.500-your-next...

So that when some bad things/decision happen, a human can blame the AI for the problem without worrying about the emotional/social/human feelings etc which the human has to deal with when working with a human boss.