Agentic AI and the Dissolution of Managerial Authority: Organisational Sensegiving in Autonomous Decision-Making Systems
Abstract
Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is shifting from decision support to autonomous coordination, challenging established assumptions about managerial authority. This qualitative conceptual paper synthesises recent literature in algorithmic management, organisational theory, and human-computer interaction to examine how agentic AI reshapes organisational sensegiving. The analysis argues that autonomous decision-making systems function as an organising layer that reallocates decision rights, displaces managerial power, and creates agency loops in which accountability circulates between human and artificial actors. Findings highlight three consequences: erosion of middle-manager sensegiving, professional identity threat and ontological insecurity, and the need for an Agentic Operating Model that embeds meaningful human oversight, control layers, and governance accountability. The paper contributes a theoretically integrated account of agentic AI as an organisational actor and offers practical implications for maintaining human agency, ethical judgment, and organisational resilience in AI-orchestrated firms.
