THE MODERATING ROLE OF METACOGNITIVE SELF-REGULATION ON GENERATIVE AI-INDUCED WORKPLACE CREATIVITY

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into workplace environments has prompted organizations to invest substantially in these technologies, yet the mechanisms through which GenAI influences employee creativity remain incompletely understood. This study develops and tests a moderated mediation model examining how GenAI assistance affects workplace creativity through the provision of cognitive job resources, and whether this relationship depends on employees' metacognitive self-regulation strategies. Drawing on the cognitive approach to creativity and metacognition theory, we propose that GenAI enhances creativity by providing information and knowledge access as well as task-switching opportunities that constitute cognitive job resources. However, the effectiveness of this mechanism is contingent upon employees' ability to actively monitor, regulate, and adapt their thinking processes—their metacognitive strategies. Based on a field experiment involving 250 employees in a technology consulting firm, findings reveal that GenAI assistance significantly increases cognitive job resources (? = 0.66, p < .001), which in turn predict higher creativity ratings from both supervisors and external evaluators. Critically, the indirect effect of GenAI on creativity through cognitive job resources is moderated by metacognitive strategies, such that this pathway is significant only for employees with high metacognitive self-regulation (conditional indirect effect = 0.14, 95% CI [0.052, 0.236]). These findings contribute to the emerging literature on human-AI collaboration by identifying both the mediating mechanism and the individual boundary condition that determines when GenAI enhances versus fails to enhance workplace creativity. Practical implications suggest that organizations should complement GenAI deployment with metacognitive skill development to maximize creative returns on technological investment.
Keywords: generative artificial intelligence, workplace creativity, metacognitive self-regulation, cognitive job resources, human-AI collaboration, field experiment