Identifying the role of adoption of artificial intelligence and digital workplace determinants in employee engagement: the mediating effect of perceived organizational support in the indian information technology sector
Abstract
The object of this study is the employee work engagement (WE) in technology-driven organizations within the Indian Information Technology (IT) sector. The study investigates how digital workplace determinants influence WE through the mediating effect of perceived organizational support (POS). Although there is increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, there is limited study on how workplace factors influence POS, which reflects WE. The study addresses this gap through an integrated structural model, which combines various workplace determinants such as job autonomy, digital workload, feedback quality, and AI adoption, and their effect on POS and its impact on WE. The study was tested using PLS- SEM with 417 IT professionals. The results indicate that feedback quality (β = 0.538, p < 0.001), job autonomy (β = 0.149, p < 0.001), and AI adoption (β = 0.279, p < 0.001) significantly influence POS, whereas digital workload (β = 0.028, p = 0.208) is not significant. POS strongly influences work engagement (β = 0.872, p < 0.001), explaining 76.0% of its variance, while the model explains 80.8% of the variance in POS. The obtained results suggest that employee engagement in digital workplaces is primarily driven by organizational support arising from feedback quality, AI-enabled work systems, and employee autonomy rather than workload conditions. The distinctive feature of the study is that it develops an integrated framework by combining AI adoption and digital workplace determinants, and thus identifying POS as the key mechanism linking to WE. The results can be practically applied by Organizations in AI-enabled environments, which can use the results to create supportive digital workplaces, enhance employee engagement, and improve workforce productivity outcomes during a digital transformation initiative