Artificial intelligence awareness and career resilience: The mediating role of willingness to protect boundaries in Chinese financial enterprises

This study examines the relationships among artificial intelligence (AI) awareness, willingness to protect boundaries (WPB), and career resilience in Chinese financial enterprises, while also developing and validating a new scale for WPB. Although prior research has explored career resilience and boundary management separately, little is known about how AI awareness shapes boundary protection behaviors and, in turn, fosters adaptability to technological disruptions. WPB is conceptualized as a second-order construct with two dimensions: collaborative boundary negotiation propensity and defensive boundary protection propensity. A mixed-methods design was employed, combining qualitative interviews with a survey of 350 employees. The results show that AI awareness significantly enhances career resilience, with WPB serving as a key mediating mechanism. By establishing and validating the WPB scale, this study advances theoretical understanding of boundary management in technology-driven work contexts. Importantly, the findings suggest that boundary-related willingness functions not only as an adaptive mechanism but also as an early signal of how employees anticipate, negotiate, and manage evolving human–AI boundaries. In this sense, the study contributes a future-oriented perspective on workforce adaptation, offering insights relevant to technological forecasting and long-term career resilience in the era of accelerating digital transformation.