A hypercompetitive business environment has put unprecedented pressure on business firms to adopt technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). Alongside, AI is being recognized as a strategic resource to enhance business performance. However, less is known about the mechanisms of AI capabilities toward performance‐enhancing outcomes. Drawing on the resource‐based view (RBV), this study explores the role of AI use in the four key organizational dimensions, i.e., supply chain management (SCM), business models (BMs), inventory management (IM), and budgeting toward business performance, along with the mediating role of employee resilience. By employing a cross‐sectional research design and using survey data of 307 manufacturing firms in Pakistan, the analysis was carried out through partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM). Results demonstrate that the use of AI across all four domains has a significant positive influence on business performance. In addition, employee resilience partially mediates the relationship between the AI‐assisted capabilities and business performance, which underscores the crucial role of human adaptive capacity in harnessing technological resources. This study contributes to the theory by demonstrating that performance improvements of AI use are not only from the technological capabilities but also from the employees’ capabilities through efficient utilization of technologies. Therefore, this study advances the literature by highlighting employee resilience as a pivotal behavioral mechanism coupling AI capabilities and business performance. This study offers practical insights for managers to strategically invest in the use of AI along with human‐centered strategies to maximize business performance and long‐term competitiveness.
Javed et al. (Thu,) studied this question.