The Ambivalence of Job Autonomy and the Role of Job Design Demands

With its positive influence on such outcomes as performance, work motivation and health, job autonomy has long been considered one of the most important job resources by different models of job design (e.g., Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Gagné & Deci, 2005; Hacker, 2003; Hackman & Oldham, 1976; Humphrey et al., 2007; Karasek & Theorell, 1990; Spector, 1986). Most models of job design assume a linear relationship between autonomy and the abovementioned outcome variables, which implies that the more autonomy workers have, the better off they are. However, some scholars also state that there can be negative side effects or too much of a good thing (TMGT; Grant & Schwartz, 2011; Pierce & Aguinis, 2013). The vitamin model (Warr, 1994) assumes curvilinear relationships between workers’ autonomy and well-being. ‘Too much autonomy as well as too little is often seen as undesirable’ (Warr, 1987: 30). According to Warr (1987), too much autonomy may entail difficult decision making and unremitting personal responsibility, which can lead to an overload of strain. Some recent studies have found empirical evidence for this assumption (e.g., Joensuu et al., 2010; Kubicek, Korunka, & Tement, 2014; Meyerding, 2015). Although the vitamin model and the TMGT approach offer a general theoretical framework for potentially negative effects of autonomy, they do not provide evidence for specific explanations of these effects on employee well-being. We still do not know why, under what conditions and through which processes autonomy may have detrimental effects. The present study tries to fill this research gap by uncovering the path by which autonomy may have demanding effects. We introduce the concept of job design demands (JDD), which is the demand to make decisions on various aspects of one’s own job design. We propose that high autonomy is associated with this need to make decisions regarding the design and pursuit of one’s job. This can be considered a job demand, as it can be associated with supplemental efforts and psychological costs (Bredehoeft et al., 2015). By investigating the intervening role of JDD within the association between autonomy and impaired well-being in a cross-sectional and longitudinal study, this paper expands the existing research on job autonomy. The paper challenges the assumption that autonomy is related to well-being only in a positive way by demonstrating that autonomy can—at least partially—lead to increased effort and experiences of stress. Thus, this paper provides a more differentiated view of job autonomy as a fundamental job characteristic.