Human–AI Collaboration and Employee Innovation: The Moderating Effect of Digital Leadership

Abstract

This study used a time-lagged quantitative research design to examine the impact of the collaboration between employees and AI systems on employee innovation, and the impact of digital leadership on the relationship between employees and AI systems. The study was conducted with workers who frequently used AI-based technologies in their work. The data were gathered in two phases, with the time between the two being around four weeks, to minimize common method bias: human–AI collaboration was measured in the first wave, and digital leadership in the second wave, whereas employee innovation was measured in the second wave. Participants were sampled to obtain a representative sample of respondents with a total of 268 matched responses across both waves from stratifications based on organizational departments and job categories. Task coordination, information sharing, the use of AI to make decisions, and leveraging the human and AI capabilities together are implemented through human-AI collaboration. Digital leadership was measured according to leaders' technological vision, digital communication, support for technology use, and ability to facilitate digital change. Innovation of employees was evaluated by idea generation, promotion and implementation. The data analysis was performed by using structural equation modeling (SEM), which included confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for construct validity, as well as evaluation of the structural model, moderated by the digital leadership effect, using the interaction-effect approach and bootstrapping to obtain the significance and confidence intervals of the moderating effect. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for confirmable measurement model and showed acceptable convergent and discriminant validity with a three factor structure. The model results indicated that human–AI collaboration had significant and positive direct effects on employee innovation, and that the connection between human–AI collaboration and digital leadership was significant and positive, with bootstrapped confidence intervals for both relationships excluding zero. This means that digital leadership had a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between human–AI collaboration and employee innovation. The results indicate that organizations aiming to implement human–AI collaboration for innovation results should allocate resources to digital leadership capability as well to maximize the innovation enhancing potential of human–AI collaboration.