Abstract:

During the digital transformation of Chinese enterprises, effectively alleviating and coping with employee job insecurity is crucial for building harmonious and stable labor relations. Although traditional job insecurity research has extensively examined the sources and consequences of job insecurity, it has paid little attention to the rapid development and application of artificial intelligence technology, which is an essential context for the current organizational management practice and research. This study innovatively puts forward a new concept of technology-driven job insecurity in the context of artificial intelligence, reflecting individual perceived job insecurity due to the development and application of artificial intelligence technology. Based on this, this study has three objectives. First, we theorize the definition and dimensionality of technology-driven job insecurity. Considering that artificial intelligence technology leads to two types of job changes (i.e., AI automation and AI augmentation), we distinguish job replacement insecurity from job transformation insecurity, thus expanding the research on the conceptualization and dimensionality of job insecurity. Second, we examine the impact of technology-driven job insecurity on employee work outcomes and career outcomes. Drawing upon signaling theory, we suggest that technology-driven job insecurity conveys information about employees’ career prospects and influences employee work and career outcomes via their perceptions of the occupational future (i.e., occupational future time perspective). Two dimensions of occupational future time perspective, namely focus on limitations and focus on opportunities, are examined. We expect that job replacement insecurity has negative indirect effects on work engagement, job performance, proactive career behavior, and career satisfaction via activated focus on limitations and deactivated focus on opportunities. In contrast, job transformation insecurity has negative indirect effects on work engagement, job performance, proactive career behavior, and career satisfaction via activated focus on limitations and in the meanwhile, has positive indirect effects on these outcomes via activated focus on opportunities. In addition, these effects are contingent on developmental human resource practices such that developmental human resource practices strengthen the positive indirect effects of technology-driven job insecurity and buffer its adverse indirect effects on employee outcomes. In doing so, this study can not only enrich the theoretical perspectives of job insecurity research but also reveal the unique consequences of technology-driven job insecurity. Finally, we investigate how job characteristics of the current job and technology-related personal characteristics impact employee technology-driven job insecurity. In light of cognitive appraisal theory, we suggest that high information-processing demands, low job complexity, and low problem-solving demands are associated with increased job automation expectations and subsequently heighten job replacement insecurity. Conversely, low information-processing demands, high job complexity, and high problem-solving demands are related to increased job augmentation expectations and subsequently heighten job transformation insecurity. Regarding employee personal characteristics, we expect that smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and algorithms (STARA) awareness is associated with increased technology-driven job insecurity, while technology readiness is associated with decreased technology-driven job insecurity. Besides, job and personal characteristics have interactive effects on technology-driven job insecurity. Specifically, STARA strengthens the impacts of job characteristics on technology-driven job insecurity, while technology readiness mitigates these impacts. By revealing the opposite effects of the same job characteristic on job replacement and job transformation insecurity and identifying the boundary conditions for these effects, this study deepens the understanding of how job characteristics are associated with technology-driven job insecurity. Together, this study not only enriches the research on job insecurity in the context of artificial intelligence but also has implications for building harmonious and stable labor relations and improving employee well-being at work during the digital transformation of Chinese enterprises.

Key words: technology-driven job insecurity, artificial intelligence, job replacement, job transformation