Trust in intelligent machines: accelerator or killer of employees’ creative behavior? The contingent role of job autonomy
基于社会认知理论和工作设计视角，研究员工对智能机器的信任如何通过工作塑造影响创造性行为，并发现工作自主性调节这一间接效应。
As the adoption of intelligent machines (e.g. artificial intelligence, algorithms, and robots) accelerates in organizations, how to promote employees’ creative behavior to facilitate human-intelligent machine collaboration has become an important topic of concern for human resource management scholars. Drawing on social cognitive theory and a work design perspective, we propose that employees’ trust in intelligent machines, as a positive perception of intelligent machines, may influence creative behavior through job crafting in intelligent machine contexts from both positive and negative sides, and that this indirect effect is moderated by job autonomy. Specifically, the positive indirect effect is stronger when job autonomy is higher, whereas it becomes weaker or negative when job autonomy is lower. Results from two studies, a field survey study (N = 247) and a scenario-based experimental study (N = 320), support our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of these findings for digital human resource management literature and practice.