Investigating the mediating role of willingness to use enterprise bots on white-collar teleworker productivity: an extended job demands-resources (JD-R) perspective

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ‘enterprise bots' (EB) have been increasingly used in contexts beyond the traditional digital workplace to support white-collar employees’ telework tasks. Given the lack of empirical studies on this paper aims (1) to explore the job demands and personal resources factors which can lead to employee willingness to use and telework productivity, and (2) to examine the mediating role of willingness to use EBs on the relationships between job demands and personal resources factors and telework productivity. Drawing on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, proposed research model used partial least squares structural equation modelling to test it on 253 white-collar employees who used EB for telework purposes. Our study confirmed positive relationship between willingness to use EB and telework productivity. Willingness to use EB had a fully mediating role on relationship between EB-induced overload and telework productivity. We found a partial mediating role for willingness to use EB on the relationship between EB use self-efficacy and telework productivity. Lastly, willingness to use EB had a full mediation effect on the relationship between optimism towards EB and telework productivity. This provides theoretical and practical insights to focus on the adoption of AI applications in the workplace and telework.