A well-configured AI agent can research, decide, and act without waiting for explicit instruction. As agents take on parts of the decision and initiation process, this affects how people experience their work.

Research published in Decision Support Systems (2024) distinguishes between delegation initiated by the user and delegation initiated by the system itself. It found that people are less willing to accept delegation when the system initiates it, particularly when they expect to retain less control.

What matters is having some ownership of the activity carried out on your behalf.

Self-determination theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, holds that human motivation and wellbeing are shaped in large part by three basic psychological needs:

• Autonomy: the sense that one’s actions are, in some meaningful way, one’s own
• Competence: the sense of being effective
• Relatedness: the sense of connection to others

These are closely tied to engagement, performance, and psychological health.

If agents are to become part of ordinary organisational infrastructure, adoption is not just a matter of technical training. It also involves role design, managerial practice, and the conditions under which people feel capable of retaining a meaningful stake in their work.

This is particularly true when the authority being delegated is no longer interpersonal in the usual sense, but procedural, distributed, and sometimes opaque to human understanding.

Adam et al. (2024), Decision Support Systems, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167923624000265

Gagné et al. (2022), Understanding and shaping the future of work with self-determination theory, Nature Reviews Psychology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9088153/