AI invading the workplace: negative emotions towards the organizational use of personal virtual assistants

Abstract

Personal virtual assistants (PVAs) based on artificial intelligence are frequently used in private contexts but have yet to find their way into the workplace. Regardless of their potential value for organizations, the relentless implementation of PVAs at the workplace is likely to run into employee resistance. To understand what motivates such resistance, it is necessary to investigate the primary motivators of human behavior, namely emotions. This paper uncovers emotions related to organizational PVA use, primarily focusing on threat emotions. To achieve our goal, we conducted an in-depth qualitative study, collecting data from 45 employees in focus-group discussions and individual interviews. We identified and categorized emotions according to the framework for classifying emotions Beaudry and Pinsonneault (2010) designed. Our results show that loss emotions, such as dissatisfaction and frustration, as well as deterrence emotions, such as fear and worry, constitute valuable cornerstones for the boundaries of organizational PVA use.

Customer fairness perceptions in augmented reality-based online services

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Unraveling the black box of job crafting interventions: A systematic literature review and future prospects

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“…Therefore, it would be pivotal for future research to implement carefully designed JCIs with the intervention content having closer ties with the AI technology, that is, particular AI-induced job demands and resources, to empower employees to undertake novel skills and discover diverse fields of interest at work. Furthermore, although there is limited evidence on the impact of the introduction of robots in the workplace on proactive work behavior, existing research generally focuses on employees' negative perceptions and construes AI as a threat (Hornung & Smolnik, 2022;Mirbabaie et al, 2022). Studies point out that the introduction of AI significantly influences all facets of work, such as developing and exercising skills, social dynamics, and an employee's sense of purpose at work (Mckinsey, 2020).…”

How to explain AI systems to end users: a systematic literature review and research agenda

“…, 2018; von Eschenbach, 2021). Simultaneously, AI functionalities are being integrated as part of a growing range of information systems (Hornung and Smolnik, 2021; Rana et al. , 2021; Tarafdar et al.…”

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