Understanding artificial intelligence usage and knowledge sharing: The social ties perspective

Although research has increasingly explored the consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) for workplace knowledge exchange, it remains unclear how AI reconfigures the relational foundations that sustain knowledge sharing among coworkers. Drawing on social exchange theory and conservation of resources theory, we propose that AI usage restructures coworker relationships along two distinct pathways: weakening instrumental ties while strengthening expressive ties. Using a two-wave time-lagged survey of 561 employees in technology firms, we find that AI usage is negatively related to instrumental ties but positively related to expressive ties. Both types of ties, in turn, are positively associated with explicit and tacit knowledge sharing. We further find that shared leadership weakens both the negative indirect association via instrumental ties and the positive indirect association via expressive ties. These findings advance a relational restructuring perspective on AI and knowledge sharing by showing that AI's effects are contingent on how it reconfigures task-based and socioemotional interaction channels among coworkers.