Assessing the Effect of Artificial Intelligence Anxiety on Turnover Intention: The Mediating Role of Quiet Quitting in Turkish Small and Medium Enterprises

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The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) refers to technologies that imitate human-like thinking, learning and decision-making abilities. While integrating AI into the workforce offers the potential to increase efficiency in organizational activities, it can lead to negative effects such as anxiety, uncertainty, and distrust among employees which results from not being able to understand these technologies, regarding them as alternatives for themselves, and the possibility of losing their organizational position. These effects can reduce employees' commitment at work and trigger negative organizational behaviors such as quiet quitting and turnover intention. Starting from this point, the present study aims to investigate the effect of AI anxiety on turnover intention and the mediating role of quiet quitting in this relationship. The study was conducted using a cross-sectional design with 457 people working in SMEs in Kırıkkale province. AI Anxiety, Quiet Quitting, and Turnover Intention Scales were utilized during the data collection process. The obtained data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. In addition to detecting significant relationships between concepts as a result of the analysis, it was realized that AI anxiety did not have a considerable effect directly on turnover intention; however, this effect occurred indirectly through quiet quitting. Accordingly, it is predicted that integrating AI technologies into business processes will increase the concerns about job security in employees, and this anxiety triggers the turnover intention by leading to a tendency toward quiet quitting for reasons such as loss of motivation and low organizational commitment.