Dr. Colin Schulz (l.), Prof. Dr. David Bendig (m.l.), Dr. Antonio Bräunche (m.r.), und Prof. Dr. Bastian Kindermann (r.)

How does artificial intelligence change everyday work in large companies, and what does this mean for how satisfied employees feel in their jobs? This study, published in the Journal of Management Studies (VHB JQ3: A; ABS:4; IF: 6.4; Financial Times 50) shows that employee job satisfaction is highest when companies use a moderate amount of artificial intelligence rather than very little or very much of it.

The study finds that:

• Too little and too much AI adoption hurt satisfaction: In the data, very low and very high levels of artificial intelligence adoption both go along with lower employee job satisfaction, while a moderate level is linked to the highest satisfaction. For managers, “more technology” is not always better - there is a sweet spot.
• Company culture changes how far you can go: Firms with an experimental, innovation-focused culture can push artificial intelligence further before job satisfaction starts to fall. In contrast, in companies with very strict and professional data management, positive and negative effects of artificial intelligence partly cancel out, so satisfaction changes less strongly overall.
• Jobs become richer but also more demanding: Interviews with managers show that artificial intelligence removes boring routine tasks, allows employees to work more on challenging and learning-intensive tasks and to depend less on colleagues they would rather avoid. At the same time, freed-up time is often filled with extra tasks, and algorithmic systems can narrow decision options or even take decisions away from employees, which reduces their feeling of control and status.

To reach these insights, the authors analyzed 4,299 yearly observations from 509 listed companies in the United States between 2009 and 2020. They combined millions of anonymous employee ratings from an online review platform (Glassdoor) with information from company conference calls and complemented this with in-depth interviews in eleven firms. This combination allows them to link patterns in technology use to how employees experience their daily work.

For practice, the results mean: managers should plan artificial-intelligence initiatives with employee experience in mind, not just productivity. They should actively design jobs so that technology supports learning and helpful independence instead of creating overload and taking away meaningful decisions. The “right” speed and depth of adoption depend on how experimental the company is and how advanced its data management already looks.

Managers, employee representatives, and policymakers who want to better balance digital transformation and human well-being can benefit from reading the full open-access article. The study “Curse or Blessing: Investigating the Influence of Firms’ Artificial Intelligence Adoption on Employee Job Satisfaction” by Dr. Colin Schulz, Prof. Dr. David Bendig, Dr. Antonio Bräunche (all University of Münster) and Prof. Dr. Bastian Kindermann (Technical University of Braunschweig) was published in the Journal of Management Studies. Read the article here (available for free): https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.70004

Contact for inquiries:
Dr. Colin Schulz
University of Münster
Institute for Entrepreneurship
Leonardo-Campus 9, 48149 Münster
Email: colin.schulz@uni-muenster.de