ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
How Does Organizational AI Adoption Affect Employees' Job Crafting Behaviors? An Approach-Avoidance Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- 1Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macao, SAR China
- 2Civil Aviation Flight University of China, Guanghan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has significantly changed human work. Increasingly, organizations are promoting the integration of AI into employees' work processes. While existing research has explored AI applications in the workplace, relatively little attention has been devoted to understanding how organizational AI adoption influences employees' motivational reactions and the subsequent impacts. Drawing on approach-avoidance motivational theory, this study investigates the underlying mechanism by which organizational AI adoption influences employees' approach and avoidance job crafting behaviors. Methods: A three-wave survey was conducted among 650 employees from five enterprises that actively utilize AI tools in China, yielding 487 valid responses. Data were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and Mplus 7.0 to test the proposed hypotheses. Results: The findings suggest that organizational AI adoption influences employees' approach or avoidance motivation, which in turn shapes their job crafting behaviors. Specifically, AI-supported autonomy mediates the positive relationship between organizational AI adoption and approach job crafting. Conversely, AI anxiety mediates the positive relationship between organizational AI adoption and avoidance job crafting. Furthermore, AI knowledge sharing moderates the effects of organizational AI adoption on motivational reactions and the indirect effects of organizational AI adoption on approach and avoidance job crafting, respectively. Discussion: This study introduces the approach-avoidance perspective, providing a valuable framework for understanding employees' motivational responses and job crafting behaviors following the organizational AI adoption, thereby expanding the application scope of the approach-avoidance motivational theory. Organizations should leverage the role of AI in knowledge sharing to enhance employees' approach motivation and reduce their avoidance motivation. Future research may focus on developing an AI-specific job crafting construct and exploring additional antecedents of AI-related crafting behaviors.
Keywords: Organizational AI adoption, AI-supported autonomy, AI anxiety, Approach-avoidance job crafting, AI knowledge sharing
Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 19 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Tian, Xin and Tan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qing Tian, qtian@must.edu.mo
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.