Generative AI crafting: A Job Crafting Perspective on Employees’ Proactive Usage of Generative AI

This paper introduces the concept of “generative AI crafting” which captures employees’ proactive use of generative AI to automate or augment their job demands and job resources. By using open-ended surveys and web-scraped data, study 1 uncovers how employees proactively adopt generative AI. Based on these findings, Study 2 develops a multidimensional quantitative Generative AI Crafting Scale (GAICS) and evidences its factorial validity. In Study 3, we establish the convergent validity of the GAICS by relating its sub-dimensions to generic job crafting behaviour, proactive personality, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and intention to use generative AI. Study 4 reveals the criterion validity of the scale, by demonstrating its associations with in-role performance, creative performance, and work engagement. Our research offers a bottom-up, employee-centric perspective on generative AI adoption, demonstrating that proactive use of generative AI in an augmenting way not only enhances employee performance but also improves well-being. In contrast, we also found that using generative AI primarily for automation does not yield these benefits. Additionally, this study provides a methodological tool for future research to explore the antecedents and outcomes of proactive generative AI adoption in the workplace.