The double-edged mechanism of organizational AI adoption on employee creativity.

Introduction: As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into organizational management, understanding its association with employee creativity has become an important research issue. Methods: Drawing on self-determination theory, this study examines the two psychological pathways linking organizational AI adoption to employee creativity and investigates the moderating role of empowering leadership. A two-wave survey was conducted among 400 employees from Chinese organizations. Hierarchical regression analyses and bootstrapping procedures using the PROCESS macro were employed to test the proposed moderated mediation model. Results: Organizational AI adoption is negatively associated with employee creativity through AI replacement anxiety, while it is positively associated with employee creativity through AI self-efficacy. These two significant indirect effects operated in opposite directions and were similar in magnitude, thereby largely offsetting each other and indicating a countervailing mediation pattern. Furthermore, empowering leadership weakened the relationship between organizational AI adoption and AI replacement anxiety while strengthening its relationship with AI self-efficacy. Discussion: This study extends the literature on the consequences of organizational AI adoption by identifying its countervailing associations with employee creativity from the perspective of self-determination theory. The findings also highlight the critical role of empowering leadership in weakening the negative pathway and strengthening the positive pathway associated with AI adoption, offering practical implications for organizations seeking to foster employee creativity in the AI era.