Working with Agentic `Teammates': When a New Organizational Actor Collides with the Human Ecosystem of Work
TL;DR
An in-situ qualitative study of a persistent, proactive AI agent'teammate'deployed across multiple teams in a large technology company reveals the boundaries of the human-agent workplace are actively in flux, triggering breakdowns and negotiations.
Abstract
Enterprise AI is transitioning from single-user, reactive tools toward proactive, multi-user'teammates,'but our empirical understanding of this transition is limited. In this paper, we present an in-situ qualitative study of a persistent, proactive AI agent'teammate'deployed across multiple teams in a large technology company. Our findings reveal the boundaries of the human-agent workplace are actively in flux, triggering breakdowns and negotiations across: 1) tacit rules of collaborative human workflows, 2) the relational boundaries of this new non-human actor, and 3) the redistribution of trust and human agency. We use these early micro-negotiations as signals to chart a new research, design, and organizational agenda that intentionally preserves human agency in a workplace shared with non-human organizational actors.
