"Thinking forward" or "dwelling on worry": How AI awareness affects employee innovative performance via work rumination.

Amid the rapid advancement of AI, employees increasingly perceived AI awareness (challenge-hindrance appraisals toward AI awareness) as both an opportunity and a threat, yet its dual effects on innovative performance remain underexplored. Based on the job demands-resources model, this study conducted two experimental studies and a field survey to test our hypothesized model. The results show that (1) challenge appraisal toward AI awareness enhances problem-solving pondering but reduces affective rumination, while hindrance appraisal toward AI awareness exerts opposite effects; (2) problem-solving pondering and affective rumination both mediate the positive effect of challenge appraisals and the negative effect of hindrance appraisals toward AI awareness on employee innovative performance; (3) perceived organizational AI readiness positively moderates the effect of challenge appraisal toward AI awareness on problem-solving pondering and mitigates the negative impact of hindrance appraisal toward AI awareness on affective rumination; (4) it also drives a moderated mediation effect. This study offers suggestions for how organizations can achieve dual gains in individual innovation performance and organizational competitiveness in a human-AI collaborative environment.