The Impact of AI Awareness on Counterproductive Work Behaviors of It Industry Workers in Colombo District: The Mediating Effect of Job Insecurity and The Moderating Role of Perceived Organizational Support

Abstract

The acceleration and spread of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology have drastically changed modern work settings, specifically in sectors with higher knowledge content, like the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. On one hand, embracing AI technology can benefit work settings by bringing about higher efficiency and competitiveness; on the other hand, it poses considerable concern to workers on job sustainability and long-term career development and advancement. Particularly, employees working at a managerial level are concerned with workers’ job sustainability and organizational change due to technology advances, as they have to manage and monitor employees in work settings where jobs are insecure due to technology changes. Although interest in the implications of AI on jobs and workers at the global and international levels has been rising, literature on how workers’ awareness of AI affects work settings remains less explored at the international and regional developing country level, specifically in Sri Lankan work settings. This study focuses on the effect of AI awareness on counterproductive work behavior (CWB) of managerial level employees in reputable IT firms in Colombo District, Sri Lanka. As part of the organizational behavior, counterproductive work behavior is understood as the deliberate action of employees that goes against the organization’s values, causing damage to the organization, its processes, or its members. Using the psychological contract theory and contract breach stress theories, the study posits job insecurity as the principal psychological mechanism employed in explaining the influence of AI awareness on behavior of employees. Job insecurity is the employees’ perception of losing a job and the uncertainty that follows. Additionally, this study posits perceived organizational support (POS) to be an important boundary condition in shaping employees’ attitudes and behaviors to change due to AI. POS is the employees’ belief of their organization’s concern and value regarding their input and the care for their psychological safety. The conceptual model crafted for carrying out this research postulates that job insecurity has both direct and indirect relationships as an intervening variable for counterproductive work behavior, which gets influenced by AI awareness. Moreover, organizational support perception has been proposed to moderate the relationship between job insecurity and organizational support. The proposed conceptual model has been able to incorporate both mediation and moderation in one model to better understand the role of technological awareness in modifying organizational behavior. Methodologically, the proposed study is quantitative in nature, specifically cross-sectional in research design. The study is based on a structured questionnaire, which is self-administered, given to the managerial employees of the IT sector in the Colombo District, which is known to have reputable IT companies. In order to measure the study variables of awareness of AI, the variables of job insecurity, CWB, and POS are known to be measured, along with advanced statistical techniques of mediation and moderation analysis in SPSS using the PROCESS macro. The importance of this study is founded in its contributions to the fields of theory as well as practice. In theory, it adds to the existing literature of AI and employee behavior as it specifically investigates the psychological mechanism underpinning employee responses to change driven by AI. In practice, the implications of this study are critical as it has the potential to provide valuable information to leaders of the organization, as well as to the human resource practitioners, regarding the importance of addressing the issue of job insecurity as well as the importance of effective support structures in the organization as it goes through technological change.