因参与而支持:员工参与AI实施过程对其AI支持行为的影响

Supporting through Participation:Research on the Influence of Employees'Participation in the AI implementation Process on AI Supportive Behavior

人工智能(artificial intelligence,AI)已成为数字经济时代组织变革的关键驱动力,但如何获取员工对AI的支持是当前企业管理者面临的重要挑战。为了回应这一问题,本文引入员工参与AI实施过程(简称员工参与)作为前因,从计划行为理论视角构建了员工参与影响员工AI支持行为的理论模型,探讨了员工对AI支持行为的态度、主观规范和行为控制的中介作用以及企业伦理氛围的调节作用。研究1采用情景实验法,通过对175名服务业员工样本进行2×2被试间实验设计,发现员工参与能够促进员工的AI支持行为;员工参与和企业伦理氛围协同提升员工对AI支持行为的态度、主观规范和行为控制。研究2采用问卷法,通过对386份服务业员工数据进行检验,结果支持并拓展了研究1的发现,揭示了员工对AI支持行为的态度、主观规范和行为控制的中介作用以及被调节的中介效果。研究结论丰富了员工AI支持行为的前因变量和发生机制研究,同时启示企业在实施AI的过程中要尊重员工的能动地位,联合运用员工参与和伦理管理两大策略提升员工对AI的支持、实现员工与AI的协同。

Artificial intelligence(AI)is one of the most disruptive technologies in this century,which has started to transform business organizations in way that could not be envisaged a few years ago.AI has become the key source of business model innovation,process transformation,disruption and gaining competitive advantage in organizations embracing data-centric and digital culture.Against this backdrop,AI has been increasingly adopted by organizations.However,the implementation of Al is often carried out without careful consideration of the employees who will be working along with it.If employees do not understand and support Al,it is unlikely to bring value to an organization.Therefore,how to obtain employees'support for Al has aroused great interest among researchers and practitioners.Given its important role in bringing about business model innovation and process transformation,the implementation of AI can be considered as an important organizational change,and employees'AI supportive behavior can be understood as their positive response to and proactive promotion of Al implementation.According to literature concerning organizational change,employees'participation in organizational change is key to gaining employees'change supportive behavior.Based on this logic,this paper examined the influence of employees'participation in AI implementation process(referred to as employee participation)on employees AI supportive behavior.Moreover,this paper conceptualized employees'AI supportive behavior as a planned behavior and employed the theory of planned behavior as an overarching framework to reveal the relationship between employee participation and employees'AI supportive behavior.Specifically,this paper explored the mediating role of employees'attitude towards,subjective norm on,and perceived control over AI supportive behavior,and the moderating role of enterprise ethical climate.In recent years,researchers have paid increasing attention to the application of diversified methods to explore management phenomena and problems.This paper conducted one experiment and one field study to test the hypothesis.In Study 1,A 2 x 2 experiment was designed,with 4 different scenarios.The scenarios described employees'participation in HZ's,a catering company,implementation of AI and the ethical climate of HZ.The results of ANOVA from 175 participants indicated that employee participation could promote employees'AI supportive behavior;employee participation and enterprise ethical climate synergistically improved employees'attitude towards,subjective norm on,and perceived control over AI supportive behavior.In Study 2,386 data were collected through a questionnaire survey and we applied Structural Equation Modeling in Mplus 7.4 to analyze the data.The results not only replicated the findings of Study 1 but also revealed that employees'attitude,subjective norm,and perceived control mediated the relationship between employee participation and AI supportive behavior;enterprise ethical climate moderated the indirect effect of employee participation on AI supportive behavior.This paper contributes to the literature in several ways.First,by examining the effect of employee participation on employees'AI supportive behavior,this paper sheds new light on research regarding antecedents of employees'Al supportive behavior and extends studies on organizational change.Second,by revealing the mediating role of employees'attitude,subjective norm,and perceived control on Al supportive behavior,this paper contributes to a detailed understanding of how employee participation influences employees'Al supportive behavior from a"planned"perspective.Third,by exploring the moderating role of enterprise ethical climate,this paper shows a more accurate realization of the relationship between employee participation and employees'AI supportive behavior.This paper also provides some implications for practitioners with how to promote employees'AI supportive behavior.That is,enterprises should respect the agent role of employees in the process of implementing Al,and jointly use two strategies of employee participation and ethical management to enhance employees'support forAl.