Digital servitization and sustainable growth in the era of generative AI: The role of leadership, knowledge sharing, and employee attitudes

This study investigates the role of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) in enabling sustainable organizational transformation. Based on an empirical analysis of survey data collected from 424 employees across companies in Heilongjiang, Shandong, and Guangdong Provinces in China, this study examines how knowledge sharing (KS) and employee attitudes toward AI may moderate the adoption of GAI and how digital leadership (DL) reinforces these relationships. The results indicated that GAI enabled internal KS and allowed employees to adopt more positive attitudes toward digital or AI tools, thereby contributing to better environmental performance that ensured long-term organizational sustainability. DL can moderate across technology, understanding, and performance. The leaders who interpret the trend in technology, understand the effect of that technology on organizational processes, and can link those processes to performance goals in order to create circumstances propitious for introducing GAI. Within this context, workers would be well-positioned to understand the potential of digital technology and collaborate in KS as well as behavioral change toward achieving goals of sustainability. With the Technology‒Organization‒Environment theory and the Resource-Based View theory in focus, a two-path model linking GAI adoption and sustainable performance is proposed in this study. The results offer valuable suggestions for organizations concerning the adoption of digital technology in environmental objectives for improved long-term sustainable performance.