Working with Agentic `Teammates': When a New Organizational Actor Collides with the Human Ecosystem of Work

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.

Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2609.29901 [cs.HC]

(or arXiv:2609.29901v1 [cs.HC] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.29901 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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