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With the advent of increasingly sophisticated AI, the nature of work in the service frontline is changing. The next frontier is to go beyond replacing routine tasks and augmenting service employees with AI. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether service employees augmented with AI-based emotion recognition software are more effective in interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) and whether and how IER impacts their own affective well-being.

For the underlying study, an AI-based emotion recognition software was developed in order to assist service employees in managing customer emotions. A field study based on 2,459 call center service interactions assessed the effectiveness of the AI in augmenting service employees for IER and the immediate downstream consequences for well-being relevant outcomes.

Augmenting service employees with AI significantly improved their IER activities. Employees in the AI (vs control) condition were significantly more effective in regulating customer emotions. IER goal attainment, in turn, mediated the effect on employee affective well-being. Perceived stress related to exposure to the AI augmentation acted as a competing mediator.

Service firms can benefit from state-of-the-art AI technology by focusing on its capacity to augment rather than merely replacing employees. Furthermore, signaling IER goal attainment with the help of technology may provide uplifting consequences for service employee affective well-being.

The present study is among the first to empirically test the introduction of an AI-fueled technology to augment service employees in handling customer emotions. This paper further complements the literature by investigating IER in a real-life setting and by uncovering goal attainment as a new mechanism underlying the effect of IER on the well-being of the sender.

Highly committed, motivated and engaged employees assure organizational success and competitiveness. The study aims to examine the association between human resource development (HRD) practices and employee engagement with organizational commitment as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 760 employees of 13 star-rated hotels comprising 5 (five-star) and 8 (four-star). The data supported the hypothesized relationships. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the proposed model and hypotheses. Construct validity and reliability were established through confirmatory factor analysis.

The results indicate that HRD practices and affective commitment are significantly associated. HRD practices and continuance commitment were shown to be non-significantly associated. HRD practices and normative commitment were shown to be non-significantly associated. Employee engagement and organizational commitment are significantly associated. The results further show that organizational commitment mediates the association between HRD practices and employee engagement.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research's hotel industry focus and cross sectional data.

The study's findings will serve as valuable pointers for stakeholders and policymakers of the hotel industry in the adoption, design and implementation of proactive HRD interventions to keep highly engaged and committed employees for organizational competitiveness and sustainability.

By evidencing empirically that organizational commitment mediates the nexus between HRD practices and employee engagement, the study extends the literature.