Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Project Success: The Mediating Role of Employee-AI Collaboration and Moderating Role of Top Management Support in IT Industry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70670/sra.v4i1.1991Keywords:
Generative Artificial Intelligence, Project Success, Employee–AI Collaboration, Top Management Support, IT projects, PLS-SEMAbstract
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is also finding its way into the IT project environment to assist in planning, documentation, analysis and decision-making. Despite the fast spread, empirical evidence is still scarce regarding whether the use of GenAI correlates with better outcomes of projects and in what ways and under what organizational circumstances GenAI is used. This paper examines the impact of GenAI use on project success, mediating factors of Employee-AI Collaboration, and moderating factor of Top Management Support on enhancing the GenAI usage collaboration relationship. The survey design employed was a quantitative, cross-sectional survey and was conducted on 223 IT project professionals in Pakistan. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to evaluate the measurement and structural models with bootstrapping. The findings show that there is no statistically significant direct impact of GenAI use on project success. Nevertheless, Employee-AI Collaboration is positively and significantly predicted by GenAI usage, and project success is significantly predicted by Employee-AI Collaboration. The indirect impact of GenAI use on the success of the project due to Employee-AI Collaboration is statistically significant and thus this pattern is that of indirect-only (full) mediation in this sample. Moreover, there is a small though statistically significant positive moderating effect of Top Management Support on the GenAI usage - Employee-AI Collaboration relationship, which results in a corresponding positive conditional indirect effect on project success through collaboration. Overall, the findings suggest that GenAI creates project value primarily when embedded in effective human–AI collaborative work practices rather than through tool usage alone. Practically, organizations should focus on enabling collaboration through governance, training, and workflow integration so that GenAI usage is translated into reliable project outcomes. The study contributes to project management literature by clarifying the collaboration-driven pathway linking GenAI adoption to project success and by evidencing the contingent role of Top Management Support in strengthening this pathway.
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