How Digital Technologies Modify The Work Characteristics: A Preliminary Study

Area of Science:

• Organizational Behavior
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Technology Management

Background:

• Organizations are integrating advanced digital technologies with agentic capabilities.
• These technologies may impact human agency and work design.
• Understanding employee perceptions of these changes is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the introduction of agentic digital technologies into daily work activities.
• To analyze employee perceptions of work characteristics following technology integration.
• To classify digital technologies and conceptualize their relationship with work characteristics.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study using thematic analysis of interviews.
• Explored changes induced by drones and robotic process automation.
• Interviewed experts, managers, and users in a digitalizing organization.

Main Results:

• Employee autonomy was not reduced when digital technologies performed repetitive tasks.
• Jobs in digitalized contexts may feature high knowledge characteristics.
• Agentic technologies can be perceived as non-human agents.

Conclusions:

• Digital technologies can augment, rather than replace, human agency in certain tasks.
• The integration of agentic technologies may lead to enriched job roles.
• Further theoretical contributions to the work design model are suggested.