Human-centered digitalization: Evidence from the B2B sales profession

Artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies increasingly perform tasks once considered uniquely human. Their diffusion is transforming professions across industries. However, the human implications of these technologies remain insufficiently understood. Research has paid limited attention to how these technologies affect workers' psychological experiences. This study examines how digital and AI-enabled technologies influence employee well-being and how well-being, in turn, shapes technology adoption behaviors. Drawing on 18 in-depth interviews with B2B sales professionals, we extend the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by incorporating j ob-related well-being as a human-centered psychological mechanism emerging from AI-driven work transformation. We label the extension as the Well-Being Amplified UTAUT (WA-UTAUT) framework. Our findings show that AI technologies affect employees' perceptions of autonomy, competence, cognitive load, and work-life balance, which collectively shape their job-related well-being. These well-being appraisals shape how established UTAUT mechanisms—performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions—translate into adoption behaviors in AI contexts. While AI can enhance efficiency, productivity, competitiveness, and innovation, its deployment may simultaneously generate stress, capability gaps, and perceived loss of control, leading to resistance, ambivalence, or strategic compliance. By integrating well-being into a technology adoption framework, this study advances a human-centered perspective on digital transformation. Specifically, we show how AI-intensive work environments reshape the operation of UTAUT mechanisms through employees' well-being appraisals. The findings offer theoretical refinement and practical guidance for organizations seeking responsible and sustainable AI implementation. • Well-being is introduced as a key construct to adoption research in the context of AI and digital transformation. • Well-being functions as a human-centered conditioning mechanism in the UTAUT framework in AI-intensive work environments. • Workers’ well-being in AI-environments amplifies how technology perceptions translate into actual adoption behavior. • The WA-UTAUT framework explains how well-being amplifies or attenuates technology use in AI-intensive environments.