Threats or supports? The dual mediating process from AI technology adoption to bootleg innovation

AI adoption is already raising troubling concerns about whether this technology will be used ethically with respect to employee behaviors. Existing studies on AI ethics do not adequately address how adopting this technology influences employees’ moral judgments and behaviors, and why individual differences may arise. Based on cognitive appraisal theory, we incorporate two controversial effects identified in the AI literature, namely deployment versus disclosure, into the appraisal process, and two distinctly opposite balance strategies, resource ledger versus moral ledger into the coping process, and explore the pathway from AI adoption intensity to bootleg innovation using a mixed methods approach. Our findings, based on data gathered in three waves from 457 employees in Mainland China, show that AI adoption intensity can lead to perceptions of discretionary resources and threats to moral meaning, which can increase bootleg innovation. Our qualitative analysis reveals that employees with a strong learning goal orientation tend to adopt the perceived discretionary resources view, whereas those with a weak learning goal orientation tended to adopt the moral meaning threat view. These findings offer valuable insights into AI ethics and employee management practices.