The impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) usage patterns on employee creativity

Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming the way employees innovate, yet existing research has mainly focused on its adoption contexts and usage frequency.

Based on a three-wave lagged survey design with 381 valid matched employees from knowledge-intensive firms in China, this exploratory empirical study develops and tests a model grounded in the exploration-exploitation framework, with knowledge integration capability as the core mediator and task complexity as the moderator.

Results show that: (1) Exploitative GenAI use is more strongly positively associated with incremental creativity than radical creativity; (2) Exploratory GenAI use is more strongly positively associated with radical creativity than incremental creativity; (3) Employees' knowledge integration capability plays a critical complementary mediating role in the above relationships; (4) Task complexity positively moderates the relationships between GenAI usage patterns and knowledge integration capability.

This study improves the theoretical precision of understanding human-AI co-creativity and provides evidence-based guidance for organizational GenAI strategies.