Do employees and firms benefit from autonomous work practice? Curvilinear effects on collective turnover and productivity of firms

Abstract

The present study focuses on the opportunity dimension of the ability–motivation–opportunity framework and explores the implications of autonomous work practice (AWP) for the collective turnover and productivity of firms. Given the trade-offs between the costs and benefits of AWP and its potential double-edged sword effects, we adopt the interdisciplinary perspective on job design (i.e. mechanistic and motivational models) as basis to theorize the curvilinear effects of AWP. We further hypothesize the interaction between AWP and work flexibility, consistent with the internal fit perspective of strategic human resource management. The current framework is validated by analyzing multisource, time-lagged data collected from 1,240 firms over a two-year period. The analysis confirms the hypothesized curvilinear effects of AWP, in which collective turnover is low only when the level of AWP is moderate. The detriment of a high level of AWP on increasing collective turnover is amplified for firms with low work flexibility. By contrast, firm productivity is high when the AWP level is either low or high, and the benefit of a high level of AWP on increasing productivity is pronounced for firms with high work flexibility.