Facilitation or hindrance: The contingent effect of organizational artificial intelligence adoption on proactive career behavior

Abstract

The advent of Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is catalyzing significant transformations in human work dynamics. Nonetheless, there exists no unanimous consensus among researchers regarding whether organizational AI adoption has a favorable or unfavorable impact on employees' career development. Building upon social cognitive theory, we explores the underlying mechanism through which organizational AI adoption influences employees' proactive career behavior. A three-wave time-lagged survey involving 348 employees from three hotels and five advanced manufacturing enterprises in Chengdu, China, was conducted. The findings revealed that organizational AI adoption led to a reduction in employees' self-perceived employability. The prominence of an employee's future work self-salience was found to be a determining factor in how their self-perceived employability influenced proactive career behaviors. Specifically, this impact manifested negative for employees exhibiting high levels of future work self-salience, while it appears positive for those with low levels. Finally, this study confirmed the moderating role of future work self-salience in the indirect impact of organizational AI adoption on proactive career behavior through self-perceived employability. Our study underscores the significance of considering individual characteristics, such as future work self-salience, in analyzing how organizational AI adoption affects employees' career-related behaviors.