Effects of automated communication on team members' activity and social presence awareness, commitment, and motivation in human-autonomy teams

Activity and social presence awareness of team members are crucial to promote positive team outcomes such as team commitment and motivation. Communication between the team members is known to develop this awareness. Software agents are increasingly involved in critical team processes and functions, for example, in automated communication. Mostly this automation is associated with performance boosts. However, how team members' social presence and activity awareness and consequently their commitment and motivation changes when task-related communication is automated or not, has been less studied so far. Therefore, in this laboratory study, we manipulated within teams whether task-related communication among team members was automated by a software agent or not to study its effects on team members' commitment and motivation mediated by their social presence and activity awareness. On three measurement points, we assessed team members' activity and social presence awareness, commitment, and motivation in a sample of 360 team members within 120 teams. Results of a fourfold multi-level mediation model supported three mediation processes. When the agent was activated at measurement point two, motivation and commitment decreased due to lower social presence awareness. When the software agent was deactivated at measurement point three, motivation and commitment increased due to higher social presence and activity awareness. This research has implications for the implementation of software agents in organizations and teams, and contributes to a deeper, more elaborate understanding of how software agents affect team members' activity and social presence awareness and its' outcomes in human-autonomy teams.