The Employees Intention to Work in Artificial Intelligence-Based Hybrid Environments

In this article, considering the era of Industry 4.0, humans and collaborative robots (cobots) will work closely to create a hybrid workforce. Although firms are carefully considering this transition, the implementation of cobots is often carried out without careful consideration of the motivation and behavior of the employees working in hybrid workplaces. In the scenario when employees do not understand their work with cobots, it is unlikely that value is brought to a firm in the dynamic business environment. Thus, this study has multiple objectives. The first was to investigate the role of negative and positive valence factors on the employees intention to work with cobots. The second objective was to examine the effects of the creativity dimensions of employees on their behavior toward cobots. We developed a model for a hybrid workplace based on the componential theory of individual creativity and valence theory, in which the behaviors of human workers are combined with the dimensions of the cobots. Data were collected from 596 working professionals from India, and the proposed model was tested using partial least squares. We confirmed most of the hypotheses about the creativity of employees in hybrid workplaces and the positive valence of cobots with our empirical analysis. Therefore, we proved that future human-cobot collaboration needs to be focused not only on the benefits that cobots bring but also on human aspects like skills and expertise. This article is a contribution to the body of knowledge on new-age technology adoption by shedding light on the human and cobot dimensions. The results of this article may serve as a foundation for future applications and research on hybrid work.