Techno-empowerment of Process Automation: Understanding Employee Acceptance of Autonomous AI in Business Processes

Research in domains such as the car industry and banking has shown people’s acceptance of techno-empowerment, the phenomenon of entrusting technologies with autonomous decision making. An open question is whether process participants are inclined to transfer their decision-making autonomy to software that they are already familiar with yet is extended with AI capabilities. This paper reports on a study carried out to investigate this question by emulating the imminent organizational introduction of techno-empowered, AI-enhanced Robotic Process Automation (RPA). It involved 126 employees within four international companies residing in Poland that had already been routinely applying RPA for the automation of parts of their business processes. Our findings demonstrate the moderating role of (1) workplace perceptions and (2) gender on the effect that perceptions participants on currently used RPA software has on shaping their intentions to techno-empower an AI-enhanced RPA system. A follow-up study with managers within these companies shows that these insights are both new and actionable. As such, our findings help managers to improve their understanding of techno-empowerment dynamics, which is conducive to better predict employees’ reactions to techno-empowered RPA and to plan process change more effectively.