Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: How AI Implementation Influences Human Relationships
Cazembe Monds, JJ Po-An Hsieh, Liwei Chen · Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems are being integrated into our social and professional lives, there is a clear need for more research that explores how AI affects human relationships along the service-profit chain through its use for organizational processes. We explore how supervisor and employee interactions, important foundational aspects of the service-profit chain, are impacted with the introduction of AI systems, and how this change in turn influences customer perceptions of trust in service employees. We also examine the moderating effects of employee-perceived service climate and a difference in supervisor and employee education, and how these affect the relationship between supervisor and employee interaction difference and customer trust in employees. Using multiple waves and multiple sources of data, our findings posit that both employee-perceived service climate and supervisor and employee education differences moderate the relationship between supervisor and employee interaction difference and customer trust.