Enabling or burdening?—The double-edged sword impact of digital transformation on employee resilience

Abstract

Digital transformation has become a pervasive force in modern organizations, bringing both opportunities and unprecedented challenges to employees. However, preceding studies on digital transformation still have the problem of “seeing things but not people”, ignoring factors at the employee level, which makes the impact of digital transformation on employee resilience remains a subject of debate and investigation. Based on the job-demands resources theory and regulatory focus theory, this study explores the double-edged sword nature of digital transformation by constructing a dual-path model, and examines its potential to both enable and burden employees’ resilience. Through the analysis of a 3-wave multisource data from employees in different cities in China (N = 432), the dual-path model between digital transformation and employee resilience was supported. That is, the mediating effect of thriving at work and job insecurity were confirmed. In addition, the moderating effect of both promotion focus and prevention focus were proved, respectively. From a human-centric perspective, the present study theoretically expands the research of digital transformation in the context of organization. In the meanwhile, this study offers practical insights for organizations seeking to maximize the benefits of digital transformation while minimizing its potential negative consequences on employee resilience.