How does employee-GenAI collaboration affect employees’ work-family conflict?
Shan Li, Jia-Min LiBackground
The increasing integration of generative artificial intelligence into organizational work is reshaping how employees perform tasks and share decision authority with technology. However, existing research has predominantly examined the consequences of human–AI collaboration within the work domain, leaving its implications for employees’ family lives less understood.
Objective
Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory, this study examines how two distinct forms of employee–GenAI collaboration generate divergent cross-domain consequences and investigates job insecurity as an underlying psychological mechanism and perceived threat as a boundary condition.
Methods
Data were collected from 427 employees through a two-wave survey. Multiple regression analyses and PROCESS models were used to test the hypotheses.
Results
Augmentation collaboration was negatively associated with work–family conflict and job insecurity, whereas impediment collaboration was positively associated with both. Job insecurity mediated these relationships. Perceived threat weakened the effect of augmentation collaboration on job insecurity but strengthened that of impediment collaboration, thereby shaping their indirect effects on work–family conflict.
Conclusions
The findings demonstrate that the consequences of working with GenAI depend on how human and technological roles are configured rather than simply on whether GenAI is used. This study extends understanding of how GenAI-enabled work arrangements can spill over from the workplace into employees’ family lives.