Revising the ‘science of the organisation’: theorising AI agency and actorhood

Artificial intelligence is a central technology underpinning the fourth industrial revolution, driving dramatic changes in contemporary cyber-physical systems and challenging existing ways of theorising organisations and management. AI agency and the rise of the artificially intelligent agent are both fundamentally different and yet increasingly similar to human agency in terms of intentionality and reflexivity. As ‘Child AI’ emerges—AI that is created by other AI—the early human design and interaction becomes increasingly distant and removed. These developments, while seemingly futuristic, change the human-technology interface through which we organise. In this essay, we explore understandings of AI agency, capability, and governance, and present implications for organisatonal theorising in sociomateriality, actor-network theory, institutional theory and the behavioral theory of the firm. We contribute to a growing and reflexive research agenda that can accommodate and regenerate theorising around this significant technological advancement.