Designing Trust: the Formation of Employees’ Trust in Conversational AI in the Digital Workplace

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption and use of AI technologies to support the virtualisation of the workplace. While previous research showed that systems’ use critically depends on users’ trust, little is known about the development of trust in AI technologies. This research focuses on an AI chatbot as a type of organisational AI system and asks how and why employees’ trust towards an AI chatbot is formed and sustained. To answer the research questions, we conducted an interpretive single case study of a global organisation. The study identifies three types of trust experienced by AI chatbot users – emotional, cognitive and organisational – and develops a framework of experiential and sustained trust formation. It contributes to the information systems literature by demonstrating the critical importance of emotional and organisational trust in complementing cognitive trust, as well as the key design features that promote trust in AI chatbot use.