While artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to offer opportunities for firms to elevate their efficiency and innovativeness, its implications for individuals in organizations are not fully known. Focusing on search behavior at the individual level, our research identifies paradoxical implications of AI through cognitive (mindfulness) and affective (organizational identification) mechanisms on distant search, influencing the performance of their organizations when facing performance deviations. This enables us to develop a multilevel model, identifying competence destruction versus enhancement and social destruction versus enhancement as job-level boundary conditions that explain whether AI enables or stifles distant search in organizations. We develop propositions and further discuss AI adoption strategies that attenuate the negative implications of AI on distant search. This contributes to search behavior at the individual level and, more broadly, to discussions on the implications of AI for management theories.
