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Employee Digital Transformation Experience Towards Automation Versus Augmentation: Implications for Job Attitudes
Citation. Ren, S., & Chowdhury, S. (2025). Employee Digital Transformation Experience Towards Automation Versus Augmentation: Implications for Job Attitudes. Human Resource Management, 64(5), 1359–1379. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.22313
Summary. This peer-reviewed article distinguishes employees’ experiences of automation-driven versus augmentation-driven digital transformation and tests psychological reactance as a mechanism connecting those experiences to job attitudes. Across a 2×2 scenario experiment and a three-wave field survey, automation experiences were associated with more reactance, lower job satisfaction and employment security, and higher turnover intention; employee voice weakened these relationships.
Key claims
- Automation-driven, relative to augmentation-driven, digital transformation increased psychological reactance, which mediated lower job satisfaction and employment security and higher turnover intention across both studies.
- Employee voice moderated the automation-to-reactance relationship and mitigated the adverse indirect associations of automation with job satisfaction, employment security, and turnover intention.
- The evidence combines a UK Prolific scenario experiment (N = 280) with a three-wave field survey (N = 241), strengthening causal inference and field generalizability but relying on reported attitudes rather than observed organizational outcomes.
Evidence & limitations
- Study 1 used a 2×2 between-subject scenario experiment among full-time UK employees, and Study 2 used a three-wave field survey; the authors controlled for positive emotion, work meaningfulness, felt responsibility, and fear as alternative pathways.
- The article tests digital-transformation experiences and job attitudes rather than measured productivity, actual job loss, or longer-run organizational implementation outcomes.