Reaffirming oneself: Exploring how artificial intelligence introduction drives employee approach crafting through a self-affirmation lens

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly adopted across industries, fundamentally transforming work environments and practices. Understanding how employees respond to the introduction of AI is crucial for organizations to address challenges in its integration and acceptance within the workforce. Drawing on self-affirmation theory, this study resorts to event strength to quantitatively measure the salience of AI introduction to the workplace from the employee’s perspective, and examines how it subsequently influences their psychological states and behaviors. A critical-incident recall survey (Study 1a) and a time-lagged survey (Study 1b) were respectively distributed to 270 and 224 employees from all walks of life. Results demonstrated that for employees with lower meaningful work, event strength of AI introduction to the workplace is positively related to their need for positive self-image, which further motivates them to engage in approach crafting. In a follow-up vignette experimental study (Study 2, N = 402), we replicated the results in a more controlled setting. Taken together, this research extends the research on AI in organizational behavior by exploring employee reactions to AI introduction through a novel self-affirmation perspective. Additionally, we emphasize the value of approach crafting—a proactive, employee-initiated form of work redesign—as a strategy to help them adapt to technological change.