AI adoption and employee innovation for sustainability: Insights from employee engagement perspectives

VIT Business School, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being incorporated into daily work processes in technology companies, thereby creating an environment for sustainability-oriented innovation. This research aims to investigate how employees’ intentions to adopt artificial intelligence drive innovative work behavior in support of resource-conserving innovations and digitalized green practices in information technology companies. Employees’ engagement is used as a mediator in this process. A model is proposed based on Social Exchange Theory (SET) to explain why supportive organizational contexts drive employees to explore artificial intelligence and translate this experience into practical innovations. A dataset of 450 IT employees is used through purposive sampling. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) is used to test the proposed relationships. The findings indicate that artificial intelligence adoption intentions have a strong positive relationship with innovative work behavior. Employees’ engagement is also found to mediate a significant portion of this relationship. This research contributes to existing theories of sustainability-oriented innovation diffusion by identifying artificial intelligence adoption intentions as an emerging driver of employees’ innovation in technology companies.