School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua U., China
Organizations have widely adopted intelligent technology (IT), expecting employees to adapt to these changes. However, few studies have explored how and why employees engage with IT change when they perceive their departments are adopting these technologies. Utilizing the transactional theory of stress and regulatory focus theory, this paper elucidates how employees adopt promotion- and prevention-focused coping strategies as mediators in the relationship between perceived IT adoption and their responses to IT change. Additionally, we introduce the moderating role of employee-IT co-existence ethics, framing it within a comprehensive model. Our research includes three distinct studies. Initially, we developed a scale for measuring employee-IT co-existence ethics. Subsequently, a pilot study involving 350 employee-leader dyads, all of whom are full-time employees in IT-adopting organizations, was conducted to assess the moderating effects of these ethics. The main study is designed to rigorously test the full model. Both theoretical contributions and practical implications of our findings are discussed.
