Employees’ attitudes towards intelligent robots: a dilemma analysis

With the increasing adoption of robotics in professional applications, the question arises of what impact robots with more cognitive skills will have on the labor market. Since such intelligent robots can highly affect the way of doing business, prior studies have mainly targeted their economic impact on work productivity. This article, on the other hand, focuses on the acceptance of intelligent robots by employees. We conducted 48 semi-structured interviews with office workers and managers. Based on three dilemmas, this paper uncovers why such employees would leave their work practices (fully or partially) to intelligent robots. Our findings show that many tasks can already be replaced with the necessary support. Employees seem highly positive about robots in the workplace and feel comfortable leaving simple tasks. Since they are especially skeptical about using robots for social, creative or confident tasks, proper guidance and training are crucial. By looking at the human level of intelligent robots, we add social and ethical considerations. Organizations gain insight into how employees typically view robotic changes to proactively react to employee concerns by gradually adopting their corporate innovation strategy. This study also provides an impetus for further research, with the ultimate aim of humanizing digital work.