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The Push and Pull of Autonomy: The Tension

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Individual Autonomy and

Organizational Control
in Knowledge Work
Claus W. Langfred1 and Kevin W. Rockmann1
Abstract
Organizations characterized by knowledge work will experience pressures
from a variety of sources to provide increasing levels of autonomy
to employees. Furthermore, as the nature of work has changed, the
manifestations of employee autonomy have become more complex and
varied. Although a great deal of literature exists on the effects of various
types and facets of autonomy, these literatures focus almost exclusively on
individual-level effects. On the organizational side however, we suggest that
the increasing trend toward various forms of employee autonomy presents
a tension for organizations as they struggle to reconcile this relinquishing
of control with organizational leaders’ inherent desire for more control.
We explore how managers and supervisors of knowledge work manage
the inherent conflict between employee demands for autonomy and
organizational needs for control, especially as it relates to the management
of complexity and fairness issues. Furthermore, we discuss how this tension
has important implications for research and practice.
1George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Claus W. Langfred, School of Business, George Mason University, 207 Enterprise Hall, Fairfax,
VA 22030, USA.
Email: clangfre@gmu.edu
Downloaded from gom.sagepub.com at GEORGE MASON UNIV on November 29, 2016

630 Group & Organization Management 41(5)
Keywords
autonomy, control, bureaucracy
Work has changed over the past 40 years. Technological innovation has
introduced entirely new industries and types of work, and the global shift
from manufacturing economies to knowledge and service economies is
having an enormous impact on the nature and context of work (Chen &
McDonald, 2015; Grant & Parker, 2009). Many of the underlying assump-
tions about the design of work that were true in the 1970s and 1980s are no
longer valid today, and organizations have been forced to adapt to a rapidly
changing knowledge economy (Berg, Dutton, & Wrzesniewski, 2013).
Knowledge work is inherently more ambiguous and uncertain (Alvesson,
2001) and more difficult to manage (Blackler, 1995), creating a challenge
for many organizations. One result has been a gradual shift in control that
has occurred from organizations to employees, as organizations have
granted more discretion and autonomy (Langfred & Moye, 2004). We
argue that this trend toward more ambiguous and uncertain work has cre-
ated considerable tension and stress for organizations managing knowl-
edge workers, largely as a result of their bureaucratic nature and need for
control.
In addition to changes in work itself, organizations have been faced with
changes in the attitudes and expectations of knowledge workers. Researchers
have noted that employees’ expectations of what the organization should be
providing them—in terms of job design—have increased, in the sense that
managers are expected to take into account not only employees’ capabilities
but also their values, motives, and preferences (Rousseau, Ho, & Greenberg,
2006). Expectations of Generation X and Y workers can be very different
from those of past generations (Twenge, 2006), and organizations can strug-
gle to design jobs to meet those expectations. The importance of employee
empowerment (Mills & Ungson, 2003; Spreitzer, 1995, 1996), autonomy and
self-management (Haas, 2010; Langfred, 2004), and job crafting
(Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) has been increasingly emphasized since the
early 1990s, as organizations have granted more control, discretion, and deci-
sion-making authority to employees. As organizations cede more control to
employees, there is often a reciprocal expectation that employees will be
more proactive (Grant & Ashford, 2008). One critical component of that
increased proactivity, especially in industries such as knowledge work where
jobs are already ambiguous, is proactivity in demanding more autonomy or at
least actively negotiating it with their employer (Hornung, Rousseau, Glaser,
Angerer, & Weigl, 2010).

Langfred and Rockmann 631
Changes in technology have been profound during this period, with

advances in communications and information technology affecting how,
where, and when employees are able to work. The traditional assumptions of
work as something that takes places in a specific location, at a particular time,
with unambiguous and clear methods and under the direct supervision of a
manager, no longer hold true for many workers. For example, communica-
tion technology now makes it possible for many employees to work at home
or at dispersed locations, as opposed to a central, shared, facility (Bloom,
Garicano, Sadun, & Van Reenen, 2014).
Autonomy has received considerable attention both in the research litera-
ture and in popular managerial and practitioner literatures. However, it is
surprising that the vast majority of the research focus has been on the indi-
vidual side, from the perspective of (and in terms of the effects on) the indi-
vidual worker. Dependent variables have traditionally been in terms of
individual satisfaction, motivation, productivity, and other measures directly
related to the employee. Little attention has been given to how these changes
in work, and resultant attitudes and assumptions about work, have affected
organizations and managers within them.
Our purpose is to “flip” that perspective, and consider the tension and
stress that is occurring on the organizational side as a result of these changes.
The underlying research question we are interested in is as follows:
Research Question 1: How do managers and supervisors in knowledge

work organizations manage the inherent conflict between employee
demands for autonomy and organizational needs for control?
We will use theoretical perspectives on bureaucracy, borrowed from sociol-

ogy, to examine how organizations are trying to grapple with these complex
issues of control and autonomy. This tension is reflected in the attempt of
organizations to balance the external pressures from the environment and
employees to give up control, against their own internal and inherent bureau-
cratic desire for more control.
Our contributions in this article are as follows: We hope first and foremost
to provide much-needed extensions to the literature on employee autonomy
by examining the serious effects on organizations of such interventions, and
the challenges and problems that ceding control to employees can present for
management. In doing so, we also contribute specifically to the autonomy
literature by providing a long-overdue clarification of many of the different
ways in which autonomy can be manifested in today’s workplace, specifi-
cally in organizations characterized by knowledge work. Instead of the tradi-
tional individual-level focus, we introduce a more holistic perspective of

exploring autonomy in terms of both the individual-level causes and effects,

as well as in terms of the cross-level relationship between the individual and
the organization, and organization-level effects (primarily on managers and
supervisors). Finally, as a result of this perspective on employee versus orga-
nizational control, we suggest a number of new possible research questions
and directions.
The Nature of Organizations and the Need for

Control
Organizations, by their very nature, are intended to provide some level of
control and coordination. In fact, the very word “organization” implies a cer-
tain degree of structure. If an activity had no need for centralized control or
coordination, there would be no need for an organization (Scott, 1981/2003;
Weber, 1921/1968). In the more “traditional” (i.e., manufacturing) work of
the past, the need for centralized control and top-down management was not
only accepted but also considered necessary. In Adam Smith’s hypothetical
pin factory, for example, the need to organize and coordinate the individual
work is clearly illustrated, as the different specialized roles (metal cutter, pin
drawer, roller, finisher, etc.) all had to work together to increase productivity
(Smith, 1776). As a result of changes in the nature and context of work (Grant
& Parker, 2009), however, this fundamental assumption about work has
become less accepted. The many forms of autonomy that can be found in a
variety of today’s workplaces are examples of how perceptions toward work
have changed and reflect a gradual shift of control from the organization to
the employee. We argue that this ceding of control—combined with increased
uncertainty and ambiguity in many industries and markets—necessarily
causes tension and stress for managers in organizations, as the inherent pur-
pose of an organization remains to provide control and stability. This shift
can be much more pronounced in some organizations than others, depending
on the industry, work, location, and culture. Organizations that engage in
sophisticated knowledge work in modern industrialized nations with
advanced communications infrastructures and a highly educated workforce,
for example, are far more likely to feel strong pressures to grant autonomy, as
compared with organizations engaged in relatively routine manufacturing or
service tasks.
The traditional assumption regarding the need for control in organizations
was especially true in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In this era, pervasive
industrialization and manufacturing grew, and organizations were faced with
a workforce comprised primarily of unskilled laborers. Frederick Taylor

recognized this problem, and through his work on scientific management set
out to discover how organizations and laborers could be more efficient and
productive (Taylor, 1911). His ideas were based on the assumption that the
balance of control between managers and employees is a zero-sum game (cf.
Fayol, 1949). By retaining control and instructing workers on the one “best
way” to carry out a process, the problems of inefficiency would be solved. In
this way, he advocated for the controlling of employee behaviors down to the
specific movements required to perform each task. Behavior control mecha-
nisms used to test Taylor’s ideas included explicit work assignments, specifi-
cation of rules and procedures, and detailed timelines for projects (see
Henderson & Lee, 1992; Kirsch, 1997; Pinto, Pinto, & Prescott, 1993).
Over the last 40 years, however, as the American workforce has transi-
tioned to more skilled work, the argument against Taylorism has grown stron-
ger, centering on the notion that by controlling workers, the organization in
fact reduces worker skill, decreases trust (Piccoli & Ives, 2003), and leads to
a variety of other problems that can reduce, rather than improve, performance
(Karasek & Theorell, 1990; Parker, 1998). As Mohrman and Cohen (1995)
observed, workers with a fixed job description became less and less common,
and flexibility was increasingly valued. Over time, those studying jobs called
for greater employee autonomy (Aktouf, 1992; Strauss & Rosenstein, 1970).
This rise against Taylorism was driven by the belief that performance will be
stronger when employees care more about, and are more involved in, their
jobs. Research streams that have adopted these arguments include the Job
Characteristics Model (Hackman & Oldham, 1980), psychological empower-
ment (Spreitzer, 1995), job crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001), goal-
setting theory (Erez, Earley, & Hulin, 1985), intrinsic motivation (Deci &
Ryan, 1985), self-managed teams (e.g., Yeatts & Hyten, 1998), and much of
the literature on self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997).
Just as there is pressure on many organizations to grant or support auton-
omy, there is pressure to retain and exert control throughout the organization.
Weber (1921/1968) explained that bureaucracy is a powerful and efficient
means of controlling people, and it is almost an axiomatic assumption that all
organizations require a certain level of control to coordinate the actions of the
members (Scott, 1981/2003). Weber articulates the arguments for why the
need for coordination and control eventually results in the bureaucratic struc-
ture, which can take on an “irreversible” momentum, leaving the organiza-
tion with an inherent drive to control. According to March and Simon (1958),
one of the defining characteristics of organizations is the high specificity of
structure and coordination, and the fact that there is a central coordinative
system—both of which require control over members to implement.

Despite the many different organizational forms in today’s world,

DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) observation of relative homogeneity still
rings true. While technology has allowed for global collaboration and other
such innovations, the basic organizational chart is still inherently bureau-
cratic and hierarchical in nature for the vast majority of organizations. As a
result, we argue that even when organizations may appear to want to grant
autonomy there will nonetheless be a countervailing pressure within the orga-
nization to retain as much control over the individual employee as possible.
Juillerat (2010) noted that even in the modern workplace, in which organiza-
tions strive to be flexible and are faced with the pressures to cede control,
formalization appears to be “increasingly pervasive” in modern organiza-
tions. In terms of the effects on individuals, one oft-criticized aspect of orga-
nizations is the extent to which they lead to the rationalization and
depersonalization of our lives, imposing planning, efficiency, and order
(Goodman, 1968), with individuals often described as being “trapped within
organizational cages” (Scott, 1981/2003, p. 5).
The level of formalization of tasks (Adler & Borys, 1996; Hage &
Aiken, 1967, 1969; Juillerat, 2010), which is typically manifested by the
standardization of work, is an important feature of all organizations.
Formalization is essentially an organizational device that prescribes how,
when, and by whom a task is performed (Hall, 1977), and often results
from bureaucratized or hierarchical structures (Mintzberg, 1979; Scott,
1981/2003). While there can be many benefits to the standardization and
formalization of task for organizations, it almost by definition conflicts
with individual discretion or autonomy (Langfred & Moye, 2004).
Typically, the more a task is formalized, the less discretion is possible
(Bailyn, 1985; Raelin, 1985)—which is a clear illustration of the tension
between bureaucratic pressures and the granting of autonomy. Adler and
Borys (1996) noted the potential for the “coercive function” (p. 62) of
bureaucracy that inhibits individual autonomy, and Lawler (1994) noted
the tensions between attempts to involve employees and formalization and
bureaucracy. However, Adler and Borys also noted that under some cir-
cumstances, some forms of formalization can actually make it easier for
employees to make decisions by providing structure for them to do so.
Thus, while the general conflict between formalization/standardization
and individual discretion and freedom clearly exists, there are also more
complex relationships to explore in this area, which further emphasizes the
complexity that managers have to deal with when considering how to man-
age the tension between employee desires for autonomy and organizational
desires for control, as it may not always be a zero-sum game, but rather a
complex interaction.

Another source of tension between individual autonomy and organiza-

tional need for control can be the example of the manager experiencing an
organizational threat, which involves a “negative situation in which loss is
likely and over which one has relatively little control” (Dutton & Jackson,
1987, p. 80). In line with the threat-rigidity hypothesis, some researchers
(Chattopadhyay, Glick, & Huber, 2001; Ocasio, 1995) argue that managers in
times of threat will respond to domains over which they have more control to
engage in risk-mitigating activities (Sitkin & Pablo, 1992), to avoid unex-
pected surprises or unanticipated problems (Osman, 2010). Evidence sug-
gests that such threats also lead to managerial stress as they seek to retain
control (Muurlink, Wilkinson, Peetz, & Townsend, 2012). A logical exten-
sion of these findings is that managers’ stress will increase, lowering their
tolerance for uncertainty, which will trickle down to employees and their
experience of autonomy.
We therefore argue that this underlying tension between organizational
control and individual autonomy is inevitable. Although some of the forces
discussed above may “push” the organization in the direction of granting
more autonomy, there will always be an inertial force that provides a “pull”
in the opposite direction, as the organization resists giving up control. This is
thus an inherent tension. On one hand, organizations increasingly feel pres-
sure to provide more autonomy and relinquish more control in the workplace,
yet inherently have a “built-in” desire to retain control. Today, organiza-
tions—particularly those organized around knowledge work or highly skilled
and specialized work—need to be competitive on the labor market to attract
qualified employees. By the same token, they need to be able to retain
employees, a challenge which has become more difficult in recent decades as
it has become more commonplace and socially acceptable for individuals to
switch jobs many times during a career (Twenge, 2006). As such, organiza-
tions need to be able to provide job characteristics such as autonomy that are
desirable in the labor market (Langfred & Moye, 2004).
As autonomy has been linked to positive individual outcomes such as
employee well-being (Wu, Griffin, & Parker, 2015), motivation, satisfaction
and engagement (Argote & McGrath, 1993; Dwyer, Schwartz, & Fox, 1992;
Vera, Martínez, Lorente, & Chambel, 2016), and lower turnover (Annink &
den Dulk, 2012), it stands to reason that organizations want to be able to give
autonomy to their workers, as having a workforce with such characteristics
will help the organization remain competitive. This could include giving
individuals control over the things that they are doing, whether it is choosing
tasks or goals, how to work on a task, when to work on a task, or where to
work on a task. Similarly, the clearest pathway to autonomy “success” would
be for the organizational structure, technology, and management to support

such autonomy, so that individuals can be successful. However, these are

substantial assumptions, and the theories surrounding what happens when
organizations grant autonomy have ignored the fact that hierarchical organi-
zations are not inherently designed to handle the uncertainty involved in
relinquishing control.
Tension in Action: Telework in the Federal Government

An illustrative example of such potential tension between a perceived need to
provide employee autonomy and the various organizational pressures against
it is telework (also known as telecommuting) within the federal govern-
ment—one type of work associated with increased autonomy (Gajendran &
Harrison, 2007). In 2010, the Telework Enhancement Act was passed, giving
governmental agencies the freedom with which to pursue more flexible tele-
work policies, centered on allowing individuals to spend some or all of their
time working outside of the organizational facility. The desired benefits are
the same as those noted in job characteristics theory (Hackman & Oldham,
1976): employee motivation, satisfaction, commitment, and retention.
However, in examining the telework guidelines for the various agencies, it is
clear that the bureaucratic pressures counteracted some, if not all, of the ben-
efits of granting this type of autonomy. The General Services Administration
(GSA), for example, stated in its telework policy that “telework is work time
(hours of duty) and is not to be used for any purposes other than official
duties” (GSA, 2011). This policy statement is somewhat troubling, given that
one of the main benefits of this type of autonomy is freedom to schedule
work appropriately throughout the day. Even the GSA administrator who
signed the telework agreement acknowledged the problem when she noted
that telework “. . . is a team sport. It’s all about culture and trust, not a bunch
of rules” (Clark, 2011).
The tension here is that the many added policies and complicated proce-
dures which accompanied the granting of autonomy can have negative effects
on employees. Individuals may end up with more task work when telework-
ing in the form of documentation and the need to demonstrate compliance
with complex bureaucratic rules. Furthermore, employees might be worried
when teleworking that the organization does not really support the practice,
causing them to work more hours than they should (Hardy, 2011). In addition,
when granted autonomy, individual employees may be scrutinized more by
the organization, creating pressure to work harder than they might have with-
out autonomy. This exemplifies the tension within the organization—while
organizations ostensibly give autonomy on one hand, they try to retain con-
trol on the other.

This simple example demonstrates the tension that organizations can face
when trying to manage autonomy within the workforce. As researchers have
noted, much has changed in the nature and context of work, and job design is
a far more complex and nuanced proposition than it was 40 years ago (Grant
& Parker, 2009). The challenge for managers to navigate the many issues that
are raised by various forms of individual autonomy is thus a crucial and
understudied aspect of organizational management.
Managing the Tension

There are many ways in which the granting of individual autonomy to
employees can affect managers and supervisors in an organization. In this
article, we will focus on two particular sets of effects resulting from individ-
ual autonomy, namely (a) the challenge of managing increased complexity
and unpredictability, and (b) the challenge of managing issues of fairness and
equity. We have chosen these two categories out of the many possible because
they address organizational performance and operations on one hand, and
issues surrounding employee perceptions of fairness and justice on the other
hand. In many ways, managing performance and managing relationships are
the two primary tasks of management (Drucker, 1977); hence, this focus
allows us to capture the essence of the managerial challenges without broad-
ening the scope of this article to include all possible effects of individual
autonomy on managers.
To explore some of the specific challenges faced by managers in terms of
complexity and fairness, we first examine the various ways that autonomy
can be implemented in today’s knowledge work organizations.
The Manifold Forms of Autonomy

To understand the tension that can be experienced by managers at the organi-
zational level, we take a look at the landscape of autonomy in today’s knowl-
edge work organizations. This includes the types of autonomy that
organizations might provide to workers, in addition to the bottom-up forces
pushing the organization toward empowering more individuals to control vari-
ous aspects of their jobs. When originally conceptualized as a single and rela-
tively narrow job characteristic, autonomy described the discretion and
freedom an employee had in carrying out assigned tasks at work (Hackman &
Oldham, 1976). At the time, these assigned tasks typically took place at a pre-
scribed time in a fixed location, and any communication was likely to be face
to face and immediate. Given the current forms of work and today’s technol-
ogy however, these underlying assumptions about work and autonomy no

longer hold true (Grant & Parker, 2009). Individual autonomy is still defined
the same, but the scope of what the worker may have discretion and freedom
over has expanded in many different ways.
To explore how work and autonomy have changed over time, and to
understand the challenges faced by managers in organizations, we will out-
line some of these changes and explore what individual autonomy is today.
We have organized this into three sections: task-based autonomy, job craft-
ing, and alternative work arrangements. This brief review is not intended as a
typology or conceptual categorization, but rather a convenient way to orga-
nize an overview of the various forms that individual autonomy can take, and
how this has changed over the decades.
Task-Based Autonomy
In contrast to the “traditional” job autonomy proposed in the Job
Characteristics Model (Hackman, 1980; Hackman & Oldham, 1976), auton-
omy can be far more extensive in today’s work, including the methods,
scheduling, and decision making involved in the task itself (Breaugh, 1985;
Locke, Alavi, & Wagner, 1998). With the increasing shift toward knowledge
work and service work in many organizations (Reinhardt, Schmidt, Sloep, &
Drachsler, 2011), the amount of task autonomy granted to workers today is
seemingly growing.
Knowledge work often adds a complication for which many traditional
job design models are not well suited, namely irreducible task uncertainty,
which comes from two primary sources. The first is the far looser coupling
between process and outcomes in knowledge work (Woolley, 2009). On a
manufacturing assembly line for example, 4 more hours work will reliably
produce more units, and the productivity can typically be very precisely pre-
dicted. In knowledge work, such as developing code for a software project
however, 4 more hours of work may or may not improve the product (and
could conceivably even make it worse). The second source of uncertainty is
multiple tasks and nested goals. The relationship of the assembly line work-
er’s effort to the broader organizational effort is in essence designed into the
job, and is typically a single task (or a sequence of single tasks), and is very
clear and evident to the worker. For the software developer, however, writing
code for a project may have multiple aspects to it, and working on a particular
section of code may just be one of many simultaneous tasks that constitute
the software designer’s job (e.g., other pieces of the current project, coordi-
nating with coworkers who are working on the same project, working on
other projects, planning with other employees on future projects, testing pre-
vious work, etc.). As a result of such uncertainty, the autonomy necessary for

the knowledge worker typically requires a lot more discretion than that
required for more traditional and predictable work in which autonomy may
be granted over the specific component of an otherwise fixed process.
Another aspect of knowledge work is potential equifinality. In work such
as software development, services, research, academia, design, and architec-
ture (to name but a few examples), there are potentially many different paths
to the ultimate outcome, whether that be a computer application, a new mate-
rial, client contract renewal, a published paper, or an office building design.
In more traditional factory work, a task typically has to be sequenced in a
particular way and is characterized by high interdependence (Kiggundu,
1983). For example, when assembling an automotive engine, there is a spe-
cific way that it has to be done, and any variation from defined processes will
result in failure. In many types of knowledge work, however, there is not
necessarily a set method or specific sequence required for the work, neces-
sitating far more discretion and control over how to carry out the work.
Furthermore, for knowledge work tasks that involve creativity, this is espe-
cially true, as it is hard to define a process to get an employee to be creative.
So although task autonomy may be based on the same principle of allowing
greater control over implementation, the changing nature of work has meant
that the actual manifestation of task autonomy in knowledge work means that
the individual worker often has to be granted control over a far greater scope
of their work.
Finally, task-based autonomy has increased due to the reliance on the use
of teams in organizations. Since the 1970s, organizations have increasingly
relied on teams to organize work (Hackman & Wageman, 2005; Ilgen,
Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt, 2005; Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). As the use
of teams has grown, so has the adoption of various autonomy-based designs,
such as autonomous work teams, self-managing teams, and self-designing
teams (Haas, 2010; Langfred, 2007). Individual workers assigned to such
teams often have to manage and juggle complex work arrangements, as their
role in such teams can vary considerably. As Langfred (2000) pointed out,
the term “self-managing team” can actually describe a number of different
designs, with very different implications for the experience of autonomy by
the individual employee. Furthermore, as Barker (1993) illustrated, some
self-managing teams can actually end up being very restrictive and even
coercive in terms of the control they exert over individual workers. Thus, the
organizational granting of autonomy to a team does not necessarily mean
that individuals will experience it in the same way. In addition to the greater
scope and experience of autonomy, and the pressure on the organization to
respond more readily to employee demands and preferences for autonomy,
the increasing reliance on team-based work creates many different possible

permutations of work arrangements that involve different types of autonomy

at different levels.
Job Crafting and Meaningful Work

The concept of job crafting is a relatively recent manifestation of individual
autonomy, as well as an illustration of how the shift of control from organiza-
tion to employee has accelerated in recent years (Berg et al., 2013;
Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Job crafting is a process by which employees
are given discretion and freedom to redesign their jobs to create a better fit
between themselves and their jobs (Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2013). This
results in the experience of work as more meaningful (Tims & Bakker, 2010;
Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) and can lead to greater satisfaction, perfor-
mance, and retention (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005).
Job redesign in general has been considered a way to improve productivity
and performance for centuries. The Job Characteristics Model (Hackman &
Oldham, 1976) discussed earlier is an example, and the tenets of scientific
management and Taylorism are clearly rooted in the logic of redesigning jobs
to increase efficiency and productivity. Adam Smith’s pin factory example is
explicitly about the importance of designing jobs efficiently. What has
changed in the past few decades, however, is the entire approach to job rede-
sign. In the past, job redesign has typically been a “top-down” organizational
intervention, directed by managers (Berg et al., 2013) and often in response
to technological changes (Hackman, Pearce, & Wolfe, 1978). Job crafting, in
contrast, is driven by the employee and is intended to be “bottom-up” as the
individual employees make changes to the task itself, the interpersonal rela-
tionships involved in the task, and their cognitive perceptions of the task
(Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). The purpose is not only to allow employees
to take advantage of unique knowledge they have of their jobs to be more
efficient (Langfred & Moye, 2004) but also to create more meaningfulness in
their jobs, leading to greater satisfaction and motivation. Another distinction
is that job crafting by the individual is intended to be a continuous and ongo-
ing process (Tims & Bakker, 2010), as opposed to a one-time redesign
imposed by management.
An additional factor driving the increasing focus on job crafting is the afore-
mentioned increasing demand for autonomy from prospective employees. To
attract talent and remain competitive, organizations increasingly need to con-
sider the preferences and values of their workforce (Rousseau et al., 2006;
Twenge, 2006). Although the argument has been made that all individuals have
an innate need for autonomy and self-determination (Ryan & Deci, 2000),
Langfred and Moye (2004) argued that an individual’s preference for

autonomy (Wageman, 1995) can be both trait- and state dependent, driven by
inherent preferences (Orpen, 1985) as well as more situational factors (Dwyer
et al., 1992; Strain, 1999), self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), and experience
(Langfred & Moye, 2004). Spreitzer’s (1995, 1996) work on empowerment is
a reflection of this change, and is perhaps the beginning of the organizational
conception of autonomy being a much more complex and subtle activity,
requiring more consideration than merely thoughts of efficiency and productiv-
ity. A more recent focus on the “meaningfulness” of work has illustrated that
when work is perceived as more meaningful, it not only results in greater job
satisfaction, motivation, and reported person–job fit but also performance
(Bunderson & Thompson, 2009; Rosso, Dekas, & Wrzesniewski, 2010; Tims,
Derks, & Bakker, 2016).
It has also been noted that in addition to the “bottom-up” process of job
crafting (and in contrast to “top-down” job redesign dictated by the organiza-
tion), employees can sometimes negotiate idiosyncratic work arrangements
with their employer (Hornung et al., 2010). This echoes earlier suggestions
by Ilgen and Hollenbeck (1991) and by Wageman (1995) who noted how
individuals can often adapt and adjust their jobs or roles outside the formal
structure of job redesign. The increasing prevalence of job crafting is clearly
a function of both the increasing attention of organizations on the preferences
and values of employees, as well as the changing nature of work. In highly
interdependent factory work, for example, there would not be much opportu-
nity for significant job crafting on the part of employees on the line, even if
supervisors and managers wanted to allow it. In organizations characterized
by knowledge and service work, however, the potential for job crafting is
much greater, so it has become an increasingly common way that greater
autonomy is manifesting itself in such workplaces.
Alternative Work Arrangements

Another example of how autonomy can take on an expanded role in today’s
work is the increasing adoption of alternative work arrangements, including
telework, part-time work, flexible work, and the like. As with traditional
autonomy, these involve the granting of increased freedom and discretion to
the employee, whether it be control over where they work or when they work.
As seen in the earlier telework example, both private- and public-sector orga-
nizations are responding to increased employee and labor market demands.
Over the past 10 years, the percentage of teleworkers has increased to
80%, with some estimates now putting the total number above 3 million in
the United States alone (Global Workplace Analytics, 2016). The link
between telework and autonomy is quite strong (Gajendran & Harrison,

2007). In addition to employees clamoring for telework to reduce work–fam-

ily conflict (Hornung, et al., 2010) and increase job satisfaction (Dubrin,
1991), utilizing telework and other alternative work locations can help orga-
nizations save money on office space (Cascio, 2000), be more efficient with
office relocations (Buono, 2003), and more easily employ talented individu-
als who may live in distant locations (Cramton & Hinds, 2004). The benefi-
cial impact of teleworking is centered on perceived autonomy and freedom,
as telework provides employees a choice over location of their work (Dubrin,
1991; Standen, Daniels, & Lamond, 1999). Telework also increases feelings
of freedom and discretion as employees are psychologically removed from
direct, face-to-face supervision (Dubrin, 1991).
Telework also typically provides flexibility in terms of how individuals
schedule their work (Shamir & Salomon, 1985). This is echoed by Gajendran
and Harrison (2007, p. 1526), who stated,
An implicit assumption in the telecommuting literature has been that flexibility

in work location is likely to increase self-reliance in scheduling particular tasks
and to increase control over the means of completing them: Flexibility equals
control (Duxbury, Higgins, & Neufeld, 1998; Raghuram, Garud, Wiesenfeld,
& Gupta, 2001).
This idea of scheduling flexibility has been defined as control over one’s
work schedule or when to work (also referred to as timing control—Jack-
son, Wall, Martin, & Davids, 1993). Many have noted the importance of
this type of autonomy for workers who have significant family demands
(Baltes, Briggs, Huff, Wright, & Neuman, 1999; Golden, Veiga, & Simsek,
2006; Hill, Erickson, Holmes, & Ferris, 2010). Scheduling flexibility is
substantially different from the traditional facet of job autonomy typically
referred to as “scheduling autonomy” which involved only the scheduling
of how to carry out a specific assigned task within the context of a normal
workday and not the much broader scope of when to actually work (Breaugh,
1985).
Finally, organizations have granted more freedom and discretion to indi-
viduals not only by using self-managed teams but also by widely employing
geographically dispersed, or “virtual,” teams (Gibson & Gibbs, 2006; Hinds
& Kiesler, 2002). These teams involve collaborations that are not physically
colocated, to capitalize on far-flung talent, or to reduce travel or moving
costs. When organizations utilize such teams, they reduce the ability to con-
trol communication processes, norms, and behaviors, as to control would
necessitate shared expectations and understandings across locations, a diffi-
cult task (Hinds & Bailey, 2003).

Summary
The breadth and depth of autonomy offered to employees have become quite
wide and deep, and there are many different ways in which autonomy can
manifest in modern organizations, especially in those primarily characterized
by knowledge work. This “push” for more freedom and discretion on the part
of employees has come about for a variety of reasons, including technologi-
cal advancement, the movement to empower workers in professional jobs,
and the desire to have fewer middle managers and more efficient organiza-
tional structures. The result, of course, is the tension we are interested in, and
the challenges faced by managers and supervisors in such organizations.
Organizations, and the managers within them, now have far more forms of
autonomy to manage and must decide what type, how much, and to whom
autonomy should be granted. The need to do this effectively is a complex and
multi-faceted challenge, and is ultimately the question we are interested in:
How managers and supervisors cope with this tension as they try to balance
employee desires and increased performance potential against organizational
needs and bureaucratic pressures.
The Challenge for Managers

Managing Complexity
Assuming that the organizational leadership has decided to grant autonomy,
to assign task autonomy to individual workers—especially in the face of
uncertainty and ambiguity that can exist in knowledge work—the manager
must consider whether the individual employees have sufficient knowledge,
skills, and abilities (KSAs) to be able to take advantage of increased discre-
tion and freedom in their work. Part of the difficulty for the manager involved
in this is in accurately assessing and evaluating the KSAs of employees. The
subjective desire of an employee and their perceived self-efficacy (Bandura,
1997) to have increased freedom and discretion (discussed in more detail
below) may not necessarily be correlated with actual objective competence,
and if there is a mismatch between the two, performance will likely suffer if
autonomy is granted to employees who are not sufficiently able to utilize it
(Hersey & Blanchard, 1993).
By a similar logic, if autonomy is granted to an employee who does not
actually want autonomy, a similar mismatch can occur, undermining employee
motivation and job satisfaction. As noted in Langfred and Moye (2004), indi-
viduals can have very different preferences for autonomy. The importance of
person–job fit, as well as person–organization fit (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005),

has become an increasingly important topic for the granting of autonomy and
for organizational selection, and continues to receive ongoing research atten-
tion (e.g., Sekiguchi & Huber, 2011; Warr & Inceoglu, 2012). In addition to
earlier work on preference for autonomy (Dwyer et al., 1992; Wageman, 1995)
and need for autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Landeweerd & Boumans, 1994),
research has continued to focus on these individual differences in employees
(e.g., Liu, Zhang, Wang, & Lee, 2011; Van Yperen, Wörtler, & De Jonge, 2016).
An additional potential dilemma for managers is the employee with a strong
preference for autonomy, but without dispositional traits (such as tolerance for
ambiguity) that would allow them to successfully take advantage of such
autonomy. Decisions made by managers and supervisors about how much, and
to whom, individual autonomy should be granted can thus have significant
impact on their performance, and subsequent organizational performance.
To assign the correct amount and type of autonomy to the correct employee
can be a very difficult and time-consuming task, given the need to accurately
evaluate relevant KSAs as well as employee preferences and personality
traits. Individual differences—both dispositional and in terms of KSAs—are
likely to be crucial as well and should prove to be a critical but often-neglected
piece of the autonomy story. If such individual differences are not taken into
account, not only may expected outcomes not materialize, but it may even be
possible to get outcomes that are contrary or opposite to the desired states
(e.g., Hardy, 2011). Compared with traditional supervisory roles, the task of
allocating autonomy clearly requires far more competence, perception, and a
broader skill set on the part of the manager. As such, the level of stress and
uncertainty for managers will likely be higher in organizations characterized
by high levels of employee individual autonomy, suggesting the following
propositions:
Proposition 1: Managing workers with individual autonomy is more dif-

ficult and stressful than managing workers without individual autonomy.
Proposition 2: The more diversity in KSAs and preferences among
employees, the more difficult and stressful it is to manage them.
In addition to the above issues related to the question of what type of

autonomy—and how much—to grant to particular employees, a separate
issue surrounds managing the manifold forms of autonomy. Managing work-
ers with substantial autonomy and different types of autonomy involves
many unique challenges that are not encountered when managing workers in
more traditional job designs.
One likely outcome is a reduction in the predictability of work output.
Partially a result of knowledge work in itself, the addition of autonomy will

likely make specific predictions in terms of outcomes, volume, quality, and

timing of work less accurate and more difficult for managers. This will be a
source of stress and dissatisfaction for many managers, especially as the
bureaucratic nature of organizations demands reliability and predictability in
operations, and managers will feel pressure to provide that.
Another issue relates to interdependence (Kiggundu, 1983). While not an
issue in all forms of knowledge work, in some instances, the nature and task
design of the work will require considerable coordination between individual
workers. When management can control the design and flow of work, man-
aging such interdependencies is simpler and easier to predict. When workers
have more control over the design of their own jobs, this can create difficult
coordination issues. Thus, although individual autonomy can make the expe-
rience of individual work more motivating and satisfying (Argote & McGrath,
1993), it can simultaneously be at odds with task interdependence in teams
and organizations (Langfred, 2005) and make the coordination of such work
more difficult and frustrating for managers and supervisors.
Proposition 3: The more variety of individual autonomy is granted to

employees, the more difficult and stressful it is to manage them.
Managing Fairness
Another area of concern for managers to deal with is that of employee per-
ceptions of fairness in the workplace. When individual autonomy is granted
to workers, it can cause a variety of such issues, and the more types and
amount of autonomy are present in the organization, the more serious these
issues can become.
As discussed above, the more diversity in KSAs and preferences there is
within the workforce, the more likely it is that managers will be granting
individual autonomy that varies in both type and degree. Some employees
will be granted greater autonomy and some less. This inevitably means that
workers’ jobs that might in the past have been very similar can become quite
dissimilar, including not only differences in the work itself but also where
and when the work takes place. As coworkers are the most common source of
equity comparisons (Adams, 1965; Greenberg, 1988), having considerable
differences is more likely to cause perceptions of unfairness among employ-
ees as compared with standardized and very similar work and conditions.
Furthermore, research on positive illusions and the illusion of control has
consistently demonstrated overconfidence in judgment and ability (Fischhoff,
Slovic, & Lichtenstein, 1977; West & Stanovich, 1997). This suggests that
some individuals will inevitably overestimate their ability to actually take

advantage of the autonomy they are granted. This is an instance where too
much self-efficacy (or self-confidence) can be problematic, because employ-
ees may believe that they can “handle” increased autonomy, but perhaps do
not actually have sufficient skills in terms of scheduling, prioritizing, or even
self-discipline. If the manager is able to more objectively evaluate their
KSAs, and decides not to grant the type or degree of autonomy that the
worker believes he or she should have, this can lead to dissatisfaction and
frustration on the part of the employee. For example, if employees really
want to be able to work remotely and believe that they should be allowed to,
then it will likely lead to dissatisfaction if they are not only told they may not
have that autonomy but they also see other employees being granted it. In
addition to equity comparisons with other employees, it has been found that
workers will perceive inequity if their compensation or job conditions do not
match their own perception of what they deserve (Dyer & Theriault, 1976).
The above arguments suggest the following proposition:
Proposition 4: The more diversity in KSAs and preferences among

employees, the more potential there is for fairness concerns when auton-
omy is granted.
Allowing individual workers the discretion and freedom to be involved in

crafting or designing their own jobs can create an additional variety of issues
and problems for managers. In addition to needing to manage the potential
issues of fairness caused by potentially very different jobs and working con-
ditions for similar employees mentioned above, there are several other chal-
lenges faced by managers.
For the organization, job crafting can create a number of potential organi-
zational issues that managers and supervisors may have to address. One such
issue is human resource (HR) related, in that when individual workers are
allowed to design their own jobs, potential problems related to compensation
and organizational policies may occur. If different employees are working in
jobs that have different requirements, standards, hours, and schedules, for
example, compensating them according to the same organizational standard
could be problematic, both from an objective legal perspective and from the
more subjective employee perspective of fairness. As the direct organiza-
tional representative, it falls upon the manager or supervisor to both imple-
ment and justify such HR systems.
Furthermore, when individuals have more freedom to craft their own jobs,
managers need to be alert to issues of changing perceptions of the psycho-
logical contract. In a more traditional bureaucratic organization, character-
ized by higher levels of formalization and standardization, the psychological

contract perceived by the individual worker is going to be relatively constant

and somewhat predictable. In the situation of substantial autonomy for job
crafting however, the psychological contract may become much more fluid
and subjective, which is something that managers have to be aware of, as they
are seen as the organization’s representative. Although some researchers are
starting to ask these questions (Demerouti, 2014), there is currently no
research that explicitly focuses on the potential changes to psychological
contracts under conditions of job crafting. The above logic suggests that
increased variety of autonomy—such as job crafting and alternative work
arrangements—is likely to exacerbate fairness concerns among employees.
Proposition 5: The more forms of autonomy granted to employees, the

more fairness concerns will be present in the workforce.
In this section, we have highlighted some of the possible ways in which

the need to manage complexity and issues of fairness and justice can be a
challenge for managers in organizations that grant autonomy to employees. It
is worth noting that many of the arguments and phenomena that may cause
fairness concerns are also additional examples of complexity and difficulty in
managing workers. In that sense, the arguments for Propositions 4 and 5 also
reinforce Propositions 1, 2, and 3. This article has provided examples of some
of the organizational costs to managers that can occur as a result of individual
autonomy. There are many other ways in which managers may struggle with
various problems and challenges resulting from the need to grant individual
autonomy, and although we have highlighted those specifically related to the
management of complexity and fairness concerns, there are many others that
could, and should, be explored in the future.
Discussion
The tension between the pressures to grant autonomy to workers versus the
pressure to retain control within an organization is complicated, and can be
disruptive in a variety of ways. The effects on organizations of granting
autonomy to employees, and the possible conflict this can create with bureau-
cratic pressures from within the organizations, can take many forms. These
can include the stress on managers of being tasked with implementing auton-
omy that they do not really want to grant. Effects can include the stress of
trying to implement autonomy without the appropriate organizational sys-
tems (technological, informational, or managerial) in place to support such
autonomy. Effects can also include the stress of needing to have a much more
sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the individual needs and

preferences of different employees. These effects—and the many possible

moderators—have not been extensively studied, and we suggest that there are
many opportunities for novel and interesting research in exploring them. This
is not only valuable for developing a better conceptual understanding for
research but also for managerial practice, as executives and managers con-
tinue to struggle with the challenge of how to manage this constant source of
tension and conflict within their organizations.
There are many specific research questions that can be explored, given the
multitude of different implementations of autonomy, combined with the dif-
ferent types of systems in organizations. For instance, a particular organiza-
tion in a service industry, with strong communications technology and
information systems and tech-savvy employees, may be able to successfully
grant considerable autonomy to employees in terms of where and when to
work (alternative work arrangements) and may allow some job crafting, but
might not be able to grant too much task autonomy because of the particular
nature of a task—such as tight task interdependencies. Another organization
might be able to grant considerable task autonomy but may be physically or
technologically restricted from allowing employees much autonomy in terms
of where and when they work. Exploring the alignment between these issues,
and the effects on managers and supervisors of misalignment, raises a host of
interesting research questions.
We do not have the space in this article to delineate all the different pos-
sible ways that the conflict between an inherent organizational or bureau-
cratic desire for increased control and the need to relinquish more control to
employees in the workplace can create stress and tension for managers.
However, we believe that we have illustrated the importance of considering
this topic, which will only become more important as organizations continue
to struggle with this dilemma and as knowledge work becomes more wide-
spread in the future. We have provided some specific propositions as well as
outlined a number of unexplored directions and questions for researchers to
focus on. As we focus on the organizational and managerial “side” of the
autonomy equation, we believe that further investigation—both empirical
and conceptual—will provide valuable insights for research and practice.
Conclusion
In this article, we have noted that the nature of work has changed in a variety
of ways. We have argued that one effect of this has been to make autonomy a
far more complex, varied, and nuanced job characteristic than it used to be
when first conceptualized in formal job design models in the 1970s. We also
observed how much more prevalent and popular autonomy has become in

knowledge work and how organizations can feel considerable pressure from
multiple sources to grant autonomy to employees. At the same time however,
we acknowledge that the fundamental nature of organizations themselves has
not changed, and there is an inherent pressure within organizations to retain
control. The resultant tension between the pressure to grant autonomy (the
“push”) and the pressure to retain control (the “pull”) has been relatively
unexplored empirically and undeveloped conceptually. As such, we have
described this tension and suggested ways in which it can lead to novel and
interesting research questions. As a secondary contribution, we have sought
to clarify the increased variety and complexity of autonomy as it can manifest
in today’s knowledge work organizations.
A central feature of our approach to autonomy in organizations is to exam-
ine the relevant questions and outcomes from the perspective of the organiza-
tions and the managers within, in contrast to the more traditional view of
focusing on effects on individual employees. Taking account of this more
“top-down” approach to employee autonomy provides a new analytical lens,
and allows us to explore unexpected and possibly harmful and stressful
effects on managers within organizations. This provides an interesting con-
trast to the traditional expectation of beneficial and positive effects of indi-
vidual autonomy on workers. We believe that ultimately this will not only
result in new and illuminating research questions but will also allow for a
more multi-level and holistic perspective of exploring autonomy in terms of
both the individual-level causes and effects, as well as in terms of the cross-
level relationships between the individual and the organization, and organiza-
tion-level effects.
The primary research questions suggested by our approach involve depen-
dent measures related to stress and difficulty experienced by managers and
supervisors, as they struggle with challenges of increased complexity and
employee perceptions of fairness. Broader research questions could involve
the tension experienced by managers resulting from differences in motives,
values, or managerial philosophies within the organization, or could result
from a lack of alignment or “fit” between the intention of granting autonomy
to employees and the ability, resources, or organizational systems necessary
to successfully implement such autonomy.
As a secondary source of research questions, we outline a wide variety of
ways in which individual autonomy can manifest itself, whether in terms of
how work is accomplished, or when it is scheduled, or where it is carried out,
and many other variants and applications of autonomy. When this wide vari-
ety of autonomy possibilities is combined with the various sources of tension
and conflict that managers can experience, an almost infinite number of per-
mutations of autonomy types and organizational/managerial tension

and conflict are realized. As a result, there are a virtually endless number of
possibilities for specific research hypotheses that could be explored, once we
adopt the dual perspectives of both an expanded organizational and manage-
rial (and multi-level) view of autonomy effects.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.
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Associate Editor: Lucy Gilson

Submitted Date: 7 January 2016
Revised Submission: 10 August 2016
Acceptance Date: 15 August 2016
Author Biographies
Claus W. Langfred (clangfre@gmu.edu) is an associate professor of Management at
the School of School of Business at George Mason University. His research revolves
around the study of autonomy in teams, as well as the topics of intrateam trust, con-
flict, and cohesiveness, and has appeared in outlets such as Academy of Management
Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of
Organizational Behavior and others.
Kevin W. Rockmann is an associate professor of Management at the George Mason
School of Business. He studies psychological attachment and relationship formation
using theories of identity, social exchange, and motivation, often in distributed, on-
demand, and other non-traditional work contexts. His research has appeared in
Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and other outlets.

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The Push and Pull of Autonomy: The Tension

Article in Group & Organization Management · October 2016

Claus W. Langfred Kevin Rockmann

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Individual Autonomy and

Claus W. Langfred1 and Kevin W. Rockmann1

1George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

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Changes in technology have been profound during this period, with

Research Question 1: How do managers and supervisors in knowledge

We will use theoretical perspectives on bureaucracy, borrowed from sociol-

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exploring autonomy in terms of both the individual-level causes and effects,

The Nature of Organizations and the Need for

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Despite the many different organizational forms in today’s world,

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Another source of tension between individual autonomy and organiza-

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such autonomy, so that individuals can be successful. However, these are

Tension in Action: Telework in the Federal Government

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Managing the Tension

The Manifold Forms of Autonomy

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permutations of work arrangements that involve different types of autonomy

Job Crafting and Meaningful Work

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Alternative Work Arrangements

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2007). In addition to employees clamoring for telework to reduce work–fam-

An implicit assumption in the telecommuting literature has been that flexibility

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The Challenge for Managers

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Proposition 1: Managing workers with individual autonomy is more dif-

In addition to the above issues related to the question of what type of

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likely make specific predictions in terms of outcomes, volume, quality, and

Proposition 3: The more variety of individual autonomy is granted to

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Proposition 4: The more diversity in KSAs and preferences among

Allowing individual workers the discretion and freedom to be involved in

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contract perceived by the individual worker is going to be relatively constant

Proposition 5: The more forms of autonomy granted to employees, the

In this section, we have highlighted some of the possible ways in which

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preferences of different employees. These effects—and the many possible

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Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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Hackman, J. R., & Wageman, R. (2005). A theory of team coaching. Academy of

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