Employee Experience in Robot-Mediated Work
Open Access DepositedAn Activity Theory Analysis
An Activity Theory Analysis This qualitative study examines how frontline employees in the casual dining industry experience, adapt to, and learn to work with robots as part of everyday service practice, using Engeström’s Activity Theory as the primary analytic framework. Data were collected through 14 semi-structured interviews and analyzed to explore how sociotechnical contradictions shape service work. Findings indicate that service robots did not replace human labor but reorganized it in uneven and situational ways. While automation alleviated some physical demands, it also expanded emotional, relational, and hidden work. Persistent contradictions structured how employees adjusted their work. Over time, frontline workers developed adaptive strategies that stabilized service flow despite ongoing technical and organizational constraints. Learning and adaptation and learning were embedded in everyday activity rather than occurring solely through formal training. Experience became visible through enacted practice, while learning emerged through ongoing, micro-level reorganization of work. The findings contribute to Human and Organizational Learning scholarship and research on the changing nature of work by demonstrating that automation in frontline service contexts reorganizes, rather than eliminates, labor and by highlighting the importance of supporting employees in human–robot work systems.
Abstract of DissertationEmployee Experience in Robot-Mediated Work
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