How AI use in organizations contributes to employee competitive advantage: The moderating role of perceived organization support

Abstract

Although the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) within organizations is becoming increasingly common, research on how to enhance employees' competitive advantage through generative AI use within organizations is very limited. Using a resource-based view model, this study investigates the relationship between generative AI use and employees' competitive advantage, as well as the moderating role of perceived organization support. From an analysis of data from 264 employees from 200 organizations, it is found that work-related generative AI use has a positive effect on employee boundary spanning, which contributes to employee competitive advantage. Secondly, work-related generative AI use also has a positive effect on employee agility, including employee resilience and employee adaptability, which further contributes to employee competitive advantage. However, work-related generative AI use has a positive effect on employee proactivity, while the effect of employee proactivity on employee competitive advantage is not significant. Thirdly, perceived organizational support can enhance the effect between employee boundary spanning and employee competitive advantage. However, it is interesting to observe that perceived organizational support enhances the effect between employee adaptability and employee competitive advantage, while weakening the effect between employee proactivity and employee competitive advantage. It does not exert a moderating effect between employee resilience and employee competitive advantage. These findings can help deepen the current understanding of the relationship between generative AI use in the organization and employee competitive advantage, and provide suggestions for business managers on how to use generative AI to improve employee competitive advantage.