Working with Robots in Restaurants: Job Responsibility and Work Motivation Changes

Human–robot work collaboration can be complementary where both the robot and employee use their strengths to complete the task at hand. But who is ultimately responsible for the task? Employees may assume more or less responsibility when working with robots, which can have a direct impact on job outcomes. In this paper the authors use the job characteristics model as a framework to investigate changes in job characteristics and their impact on job responsibility and worker outcomes as a result of robot implementation in restaurants. The results identify changes in task significance, job autonomy, and feedback from the job as important predictors of changes in experienced responsibility toward work. The study also found a significant positive relationship between job responsibility and motivation to work.