Collaborating with Virtual Assistants in Organizations: Analyzing Social Loafing Tendencies and Responsibility Attribution
通过在线实验（N=102）发现，员工与虚拟助手协作时会出现社会懈怠倾向，并倾向于将责任推给虚拟助手，为虚拟团队管理提供警示。
Organizations increasingly introduce collaborative technologies in form of virtual assistants (VAs) to save valuable resources, especially when employees are assisted with work-related tasks. However, the effect of VAs on virtual teams and collaboration remains uncertain, particularly whether employees show social loafing (SL) tendencies, i.e., applying less effort for collective tasks compared to working alone. While extant research indicates that VAs collaboratively working in teams exert greater results, less is known about SL in virtual collaboration and how responsibility attribution alters. An online experiment with N = 102 was conducted in which participants were assisted by a VA in solving a task. The results indicate SL tendencies in virtual collaboration with VAs and that participants tend to cede responsibility to the VA. This study makes a first foray and extends the information systems (IS) literature by analyzing SL and responsibility attribution thus updates our knowledge on virtual collaboration with VAs.