Knowledge Sharing Key Issue for Digital Technology and Artificial Intelligence Adoption

In the current digital era, digital technologies develop and emerge rapidly, businesses, especially the electronic sector more connected to information technology, facing challenges in the terms of its technology infrastructure and tactical directions. That's why most of them adopt the latest digital technology (DT) and design novel business strategies and models. The growing significance of AI in the transformation of manufacturing operations and the demand for a thorough knowledge of the variables affecting its adoption serve as the driving forces behind the study. Several researchers have presented that digital technology can lead toward AI adoption. Though, previous studies lack an efficient transformation pathway. Therefore, this study establishes an inventive approach and aims to investigate the direct link between digital technology and AI adoption, the mediating function of knowledge sharing (KS) between them, and explore the moderating impact of privacy and security that assist in the acceleration of AI adoption in electronics manufacturing enterprises through the antecedent of digital technology. This study is quantitative in nature, random sampling method and questionnaire is used as a survey tool. Depending on 298 questionnaire data from electronic firms of Saudi Arabia, this study performs multi-level correlation and regression analysis to evaluate study hypotheses. Findings confirm that digital technology has a positive influence on AI adoption. In addition, outcomes corroborate that knowledge sharing mediates in the linkage between digital technology and AI adoption. The results also proved that privacy and security have a positive moderation impact on the association between digital technology and AI adoption. This study enlighten that the adoption of this framework enables electronic manufacturing companies to strategically integrate digital-technologies to promote effective AI adoption, increase its operational efficiency, and sustain a competitive advantage in the constantly evolving manufacturing landscape. The outcomes as well supplement the previous study on the linkage between digital technology and AI adoption, expand application space and theoretical boundary from the perspective of knowledge sharing, privacy and security at the managerial level, and give reference for AI adoption in, as electronics manufacturing firms.