Moral Responsibility and the AI Dilemma: Why Anxious Managers Are More Willing to Support Subordinates’ Use of GenAI

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-456-3_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

managers’ moral responsibility; support for subordinates’ use of GenAI; technological sensitivity; moral anxiety

Abstract

Previous research has highlighted a prevalent phenomenon of “algorithm aversion” among professional managers. However, it remains unclear whether this aversion extends to their attitudes toward subordinates’ use of AI tools. Drawing on moral decision-making theory, this paper develops a theoretical model to investigate how managers’ moral responsibility influences their support for subordinates’ use of Generative AI (GenAI). The empirical analysis reveals the following key findings: a) managers’ moral responsibility is positively associated with their support for subordinates’ use of GenAI; b) managers’ technological sensitivity mediates the relationship between moral responsibility and their support for subordinates’ use of GenAI; and c) managers’ moral anxiety positively moderates the relationship between moral responsibility and their support for subordinates’ use of GenAI. Specifically, when managers experience heightened moral anxiety, the positive effect of moral responsibility on support for subordinates’ use of GenAI is amplified. This study uncovers the mechanisms through which managers’ moral responsibility shapes the organizational adoption of GenAI technologies, providing theoretical insights for the implementation and promotion of GenAI within organizations.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Taofen Li
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/08/25
TI  - Moral Responsibility and the AI Dilemma: Why Anxious Managers Are More Willing to Support Subordinates’ Use of GenAI
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on New Computational Social Science (ICNCSS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 32
EP  - 43
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-456-3_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-456-3_4
ID  - Li2025
ER  -