The Dark Side of Employee Collaboration with Robots: Exploring Its Impact on Self-Esteem Threat and Burnout

Abstract

The increasing application of robots in the workplace has made employee collaboration with robots a prevalent phenomenon. Existing literature on human-robot collaboration has both implicitly and explicitly highlighted the benefits of such collaboration, such as promoting efficiency and productivity. Drawing upon self-regulation theory, this study challenges this prevailing assumption by revealing a potential dark side of employee collaboration with robots, specifically its potential to lead to burnout. Our findings, derived from an experiment and a multi-wave field survey, demonstrate that employee collaboration with robots can lead to a self-esteem threat, which in turn results in burnout. Moreover, the perceived intelligence of robots moderated the indirect effect of employee collaboration with robots on burnout through self-esteem threat. This effect was more pronounced when the perceived intelligence of robots was high, as opposed to low. This study offers fresh insights into the consequences of employees collaborating with robots. It also highlights the need for future research to focus on the psychological well-being of employees engaged in such collaborations.