The impact of trust in AI on career sustainability: The role of employee–AI collaboration and protean career orientation

Drawing upon person–environment fit theory and the importance of employees' career sustainability in Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration within organizations, we propose a moderated mediation model to test how and when AI trust is linked to employees' career sustainability. This mechanism posits employee–AI collaboration as a mediator and employees' protean career orientation as a moderator. Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesized model. In Study 1, a 5-item measure was developed to evaluate employee–AI collaboration and tested with a sample of employees working with AI technology. In Study 2, multisource and two-wave data were collected to analyze 447 employee–supervisor dyads. The results indicated that AI trust was positively related to employee-rated well-being and supervisor-rated employee productivity via employee–AI collaboration. In addition, the relationship between AI trust and employee–AI collaboration was stronger for employees with high protean career orientation. We concluded with a discussion of the theoretical contributions and practical implications.