Transforming work or eroding social capital? How reliance on artificial intelligence drives workplace involution

Abstract

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into organizational contexts is reshaping how employees work, interact, and respond to changing workplace dynamics. Although AI is often expected to improve efficiency and reduce workload, emerging evidence points to a potential dark side, as AI adoption may intensify competitive pressure within organizations. Motivated by this paradox, this study examines how AI reliance may erode workplace social capital by fostering involution—an excessive and inefficient form of competition characterized by escalating effort and diminishing returns. This research focuses on digitally enabled and highly competitive workplace settings, where employee performance and outputs are more visible, transparent, and comparable. We propose that, from employees’ perspective, AI reliance is associated with higher levels of involution through elevated performance expectations and anxiety. Using survey data from employees in China, the study hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. The results support the proposed model and indicate a significant sequential mediation pattern linking AI reliance, performance expectations, employee anxiety, and workplace involution. Notably, the direct relationship between AI reliance and involution is not significant, suggesting that AI reliance is associated with employees’ defensive competitive behavior primarily through employees’ perception of external evaluative pressures and internal psychological responses. These findings highlight the unintended social consequences of AI adoption in organizations, and underscore the importance of protecting employee wellbeing, communicating realistic performance expectations, and maintaining workplace social capital when implementing AI in digitally enabled organizations.