The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Replacing Humans in Making Human Resource Management Decisions on Fairness: A Case of Resume Screening

Fei Cai, Jiashu Zhang () and Lei Zhang
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Fei Cai: School of Business, Hohai University, Nanjing 211100, China
Jiashu Zhang: Department of Construction and Real Estate, School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Lei Zhang: Research Center of Smart City, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 9, 1-19

Abstract: A growing number of organizations have used artificial intelligence (AI) to make decisions to replace human resource (HR) workers; yet, the fairness perceptions of the people affected by the decision are still unclear. Given that an organization’s sustainability is significantly influenced by individuals’ perceptions of fairness, this study takes a resume-screening scenario as an example to explore the impact of AI replacing humans on applicants’ perceptions of fairness. This study adopts the method of the online scenario experiment and uses SPSS to analyze the experimental data: 189 and 214 people, respectively, participated in two online scenarios, with two independent variables of decision makers (AI and humans), two dependent variables of procedural and distributive fairness, and two moderating variables of outcome favorability and the expertise of AI. The results show that the applicants tend to view AI screening resumes as less fair than humans. Furthermore, moderating effects exist between the outcome favorability and the expertise of AI. This study reveals the impact of AI substituting for humans in decision-making on fairness. The proposed model can help organizations use AI to screen resumes more effectively. And future research can explore the collaboration between humans and AI to make human resource management decisions.

Keywords: screen resumes; decision making; artificial intelligence; fairness; outcome favorability; expertise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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