How organizations’ technological orientation shapes job seekers’ responses toward AI

Scholars and practitioners are increasingly interested in the organizational costs and benefits of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into hiring practices. Job seekers, meanwhile, have shown ambivalence toward companies’ use of this new technology, but is this true for all types of organizations? Drawing on the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) framework and cognitive dissonance theory, we investigate how an organization’s technological orientation shapes job seekers’ perceptions of, and intentions toward, the use of AI in hiring. Across four controlled experiments, we find that job seekers are less willing to apply to low-tech (vs. high-tech) organizations that use AI-based (vs. human-based) selection processes (Study 1). This effect arises from job seekers’ lower perceived fluency between the organization’s technological orientation and the selection process (Study 2), which in turn induces cognitive dissonance and decreases their willingness to apply (Study 3a). Finally, the results indicate that these effects generalize across different organizational contexts (Study 3b). Our research contributes to the literature on AI acceptance in recruitment by integrating organizational-level and psychological explanations of job seekers’ responses to AI, offering practical insights for human resources (HR) professionals seeking to effectively implement AI in hiring.