The Digitalization of Work and Personal Initiative. the Role of Organizational Error Management Culture

Abstract

The digitalization of work provides opportunities to expand employees"personal initiative but holds the risk of errors. That's why the introduction of new technologies always affects organizational error management culture. This is of particular importance in knowledge-intensive businesses. We investigated the effects of workplace digitalization on the personal initiative (PI) of tax-consultant office employees (N = 457) under consideration of organizational error management culture (EMC) and enterprise size. We used a moderated mediation model. (Wage-earning) tax consultants show more personal initiative than assistant tax consultants. EMC partially mediates the relationship between digitalization and PI. The effect of EMC on PI is stronger for assistant tax consultants. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications and transferability, focusing on work design and including the results of objective-condition-related work analyses.