Linking employees’ challenge-hindrance appraisals toward AI to service performance: the influences of job crafting, job insecurity and AI knowledge
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
ISSN: 0959-6119
Article publication date: 26 May 2023
Issue publication date: 30 January 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the associations linking employees’ challenge-hindrance appraisals toward artificial intelligence (AI) to service performance while considering the dual mediating roles of job crafting and job insecurity, as well as the moderating role of AI knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was administered to a sample of 297 service industry employees. This study examined all the hypotheses with Mplus 8.0.
Findings
This study confirms that challenge appraisal toward AI has an indirect positive influence on service performance via job crafting (motivation process), whereas hindrance appraisal toward AI has an indirect negative influence on service performance via job insecurity (strain process). Meanwhile, AI knowledge, serving as a key personal resource, could strengthen the positive impacts of challenge appraisal toward AI on job crafting and of hindrance appraisal toward AI on job insecurity.
Practical implications
Organizational decision-makers should first survey employees’ appraisals toward AI and then adopt targeted managerial strategies. From the perspective of service industry employees, employees should adopt proactive coping strategies and enrich their knowledge of AI to meet the challenges brought by this technology.
Originality/value
The primary contribution of this study is that we enrich the literature on AI by exploring the dual mediators (i.e. job crafting and job insecurity) through which AI awareness affects service performance. Moreover, this study advances our understanding of when appraisals toward AI influence job outcomes by identifying the moderating role of AI knowledge.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: This research was supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Science of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. 20GLC005), Ministry of Education Project of Humanities and Social Science (Grant No. 20YJC880026) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72001100).
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Contribution: CH: Conceptualization, methodology, writing – original draft and review and editing and supervision. RT: Formal analysis and writing – original draft. JS: Resources, funding acquisition and writing – review and editing.
Citation
He, C., Teng, R. and Song, J. (2024), "Linking employees’ challenge-hindrance appraisals toward AI to service performance: the influences of job crafting, job insecurity and AI knowledge", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 975-994. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-07-2022-0848
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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