Artificial intelligence changes the way we work: A close look at innovating with chatbots

Abstract

An enhanced understanding of the innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI) is essential for organizations to improve work design and daily business operations. This study's purpose is to offer insights into how AI can transform organizations' work practices through diving deeply into its innovative use in the context of a primary AI tool, a chatbot, and examining the antecedents of innovative use by conceptualizing employee trust as a multidimensional construct and exploring employees' perceived benefits. In particular, we have conceptualized employee trust in chatbots as a second-order construct, including three first-order variables: trust in functionality, trust in reliability, and trust in data protection. We collected data from 202 employees. The results supported our conceptualization of trust in chatbots and showed that three dimensions of first-order trust beliefs have relatively the same level of importance. Further, both knowledge support and work–life balance enhance trust in chatbots, which in turn leads to innovative use of chatbots. Our study contributes to the existing literature by introducing the new conceptualization of trust in chatbots and examining its antecedents and outcomes. The results can provide important practical insights regarding how to support innovative use of chatbots as the new way we organize work.