Abstract
The “Taylorian” management thinking of the outside control in the past has been unable to adapt to the current Internet era. The external control has changed to the flexible management of self-control, and the increase of job autonomy has become a trend. Job autonomy refers to the discretion of an organization to allow employees to complete tasks when, where, in what order and in what manner. In the past, the mainstream theoretical models and empirical studies have found that the job autonomy has a positive impact on employees. But currently the new research has found that the excessive job autonomy can have a negative impact on employees, and there is a “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect. This article mainly expounds the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect of the job autonomy, and then, explains the effect by the two types mechanisms, “additive benefit and cost” and “interactive motivation and opportunity”. Finally, this article puts forward some issues that should be paid attention to future researches.
Highlights
Under the traditional “Taylor-style” management model, employees’ work is often constrained by the organization
The results show that when the level of job autonomy increases from low to medium, the job satisfaction will increase, but in the high level of job autonomy, the job satisfaction will decrease
Xing Lu et al (2018) distinguished the causes of the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect according to the interaction of potential mechanisms as “additive benefit and cost” and “interactive motivation and opportunity”
Summary
Under the traditional “Taylor-style” management model, employees’ work is often constrained by the organization. Excessive job autonomy will aggravate employees’ job burnout, and cause unethical behavior of employees (Lu et al, 2017). These studies show that increasing autonomy brings positive effects, and excessive job autonomy can have negative effects. We find that the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect of job autonomy affects employees’ work attitude, and their work behavior To this end, this article first summarizes the impact of job autonomy’s “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect, and based on the dynamic mechanism, innovatively uses the “additive benefit and cost” and “interactive motivation and opportunity” to explain the effects. I explore future directions worthy of attention and research
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