AI Hasn't Fixed Teamwork, But It Shifted Collaborative Culture: A Longitudinal Study in a Project-Based Software Development Organization (2023-2025)

2025-09-13

AI Summary

This study investigates whether AI can mitigate persistent collaboration challenges—such as ambiguous performance accountability and poor communication—in project-based software development teams. Drawing on a two-phase longitudinal qualitative study (2023–2025) comprising 15 in-depth interviews and grounded in organizational behavior theory, the research finds that AI does not directly resolve core coordination mechanisms nor substantially enhance cross-role alignment. Instead, AI functions as a “cultural catalyst,” fostering emergent collaborative norms centered on efficiency prioritization, process transparency, and internalized accountability. Although primarily embedded within individual task workflows, AI unexpectedly reshapes team-level professional standards and practice consensus, driving its institutionalization from a tool to a collaborative infrastructure. The study advances beyond technocentric perspectives by arguing that AI’s fundamental impact on collaboration lies in cultural reconfiguration—not functional substitution.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Human-AI Collaboration / Human-AI Teaming
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Coordination and Collaboration
• Multiagent Systems: Coordination and Collaboration

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

When AI entered the workplace, many believed it could reshape teamwork as profoundly as it boosted individual productivity. Would AI finally ease the longstanding challenges of team collaboration? Our findings suggested a more complicated reality. We conducted a longitudinal two-wave interview study (2023-2025) with members (N=15) of a project-based software development organization to examine the expectations and use of AI in teamwork. In early 2023, just after the release of ChatGPT, participants envisioned AI as an intelligent coordinator that could align projects, track progress, and ease interpersonal frictions. By 2025, however, AI was used mainly to accelerate individual tasks such as coding, writing, and documentation, leaving persistent collaboration issues of performance accountability and fragile communication unresolved. Yet AI reshaped collaborative culture: efficiency became a norm, transparency and responsible use became markers of professionalism, and AI was increasingly accepted as part of teamwork.

Problem

• Examining AI's impact on team collaboration challenges
• Assessing AI's role in addressing performance accountability issues
• Investigating AI's effect on communication and coordination efficiency

Innovation

• Longitudinal interview study methodology
• AI for individual task acceleration
• Reshaped collaborative culture norms