Since the late 1980s ECSCW has been key in facilitating discussion across social and technical disciplines to understand and support cooperative work. How this gets instantiated evolves as new technologies open up new collaboration possibilities and new ‘work’ domains, which in turn challenge what we mean by ‘work’. In this provocation, I will invite us to explore a different disciplinary angle on the ‘social’ and the ‘human’ matters of work, asking: how can we better craft quality cooperative work experiences, particularly in this new era of increasing human-AI collaboration? This comes from an understanding that the practical accomplishment of cooperative work is not just interactional but also relational and emotional, and embedded in work cultures that are enacted through everyday interactions. They are inextricably entwined. What can we draw then from fields such as positive psychology and positive organisational psychology to understand, and design for, cooperative work arrangements based on individual and collective strengths? How can we influence cultures where people can thrive and do great work together? How might this inspire the design of different technologies? Expanding such disciplinary connections in CSCW research has the potential to make a real difference for the future of cooperative work support.