When Actors Stop Participating: Delegated Participation and Representative-Centered Organizing

Organizational theories usually treat participation as actor-bound: the actors whose interests are at stake are expected to occupy the interactions through which outcomes are produced. Agentic artificial intelligence and other autonomous representatives weaken that correspondence. This conceptual article develops a theory of delegated participation, defined as the authorized transfer of communicative, evaluative, coordinative, or exchange-related participation from a principal to a representative. The argument moves beyond treating participation delegation as merely another agency relationship. When representatives operate on multiple sides of an exchange, they form an interaction system that can persist without direct principal participation, reshape the alternatives reaching principals, and separate participation from accountability. The model identifies activity conditions, capability–structure alignment, and authorization as antecedents; bilateral representation and interaction displacement as mechanisms; and symbolic concentration and representative-centered organizing as organizational consequences. The framework contributes by challenging the actor-bound conception of participation, identifying bilateral representation as a discontinuity in organizing, and explaining why declining principal participation may coexist with persistent principal accountability and increasingly consequential symbolic appearances. The article concludes with managerial implications and an empirical research agenda focused on recruitment, procurement, customer service, and AI-mediated negotiation.