Paradox Of Autonomy Research Articles

Harming one to benefit another: The paradox of autonomy and consent in maternity care.

This paper critically analyses 'the paradox of autonomy and consent in maternity care'. It argues that maternity care has certain features that increase the need for explicit attention to, and respect for, both autonomy and rigorous informed consent processes. And, moreover, that the resulting need is considerably greater than in almost all other areas of medicine. These features are as follows: (1) maternity care involves particularly socially sensitive body parts that are regularly implicated in consent-centred procedures, as well as in unconsented interventions, in ordinary, non-medical life; and (2) much of maternity care (especially intervening in childbirth) is medically unique, in that it harms one patient (the mother) not primarily for the promotion of her own health but for the benefit of another (the baby). The apt comparison, within medicine, is therefore with non-therapeutic research and transplantation medicine-both of which have elevated consent requirements characterized by very rigorous consent processes. At the same time-and this delivers the titular paradox-the importance of autonomy and consent in maternity care is at particular risk of being denied or disregarded. Jointly, these considerations make a very strong case for change: attention to and respect for autonomy and consent should be (1) core values; (2) key points of practical attention in the years ahead; and (3) central quality indicators in maternity care.

Empowerment and beyond: Paradoxes of self-organised work

In recent years, empowerment has increasingly become the watchword for work in knowledge-intensive industries. In particular, The Agile Manifesto (2001) and new management approaches such as agile frameworks promise to cut down documentation duties and increase autonomy for knowledge workers. It nonetheless remains an open question whether self-organisation as a structural framework and self-organising as an agentic, team-based process can actually be realised in a holistic manner. By building on insights into the paradox of organising and the paradox of autonomy and control, we consider the conditions under which self-organised work in fact becomes feasible. We therefore focus conceptually on two paradoxes of empowerment and empirically on project teams within software development firms. Our data show that organisations might respond to these paradoxes by structurally and culturally opening up to agile approaches – thereby not only empowering teams, but also enabling them to develop by providing structural and personal resources, qualifications and means for promoting self-awareness.

Paradoxical autonomy in cultural organisations: an analysis of changing relations between cultural organisations and their institutional environment, with examples from libraries, archives and museums

ABSTRACT This article analyses the changing relationships between cultural organisations and their institutional environment. Cultural policy research has traditionally focused on a decline in the autonomy of cultural organisations with Pierre Bourdieu’s theories as an overarching theoretical framework. However, recent studies of public administration tell another story. It shows how relationships between cultural organisations and their institutional environment are paradoxical. Cultural organisations have experienced a growing focus on societal value, users and performance indicators, which can be viewed as a decrease in their autonomy. Simultaneously, they have been able to pursue new ways of fulfilling their purpose, an increase in autonomy. The article discusses the theoretical perspectives on this paradox, with focus on New Public Governance, and shows that the paradox of autonomy entails a change in the roles of professionals, politicians and users. Politicians still determine subsidies, but they have increasingly left policymaking to the cultural organisations.

A student’s and a teacher's right to freedom of education

This conceptual essay, which opens the special issue, examines why a student’s right to freedom of education – the right for a student to define their own education – is so crucial for the education itself. Four diverse educational approaches are considered: training, closed socialization, open socialization, and critical examination, along with the Bakhtinian dialogic pedagogy to reveal the need for freedom of education within each of the approaches and the pedagogy. The eight aspects of the right to freedom are explicated. Three major objections against the right are considered and rebuked: 1) the Kantian paradox of autonomy and paternalism in education, 2) the paradox of learning and ignorance, and 3) fear of non-participation in education without coercion. The legitimate limitations of the right are discussed. Finally, the two major pathways to the right – radical and gradual – are analyzed.
 I sent the earlier draft of the paper to the Dialogic Pedagogy journal community, asking for critical commentaries. Many people submitted their critical commentaries involving their agreements, disagreements, associative readings, extensions, evaluations, and so on. My paper, their commentaries constitute this special, and my reply constitutes this special issue. Three people – David Kirshner, Belkacem TAIEB, and Jim Rietmulder – chose to provide commentaries on the margins. I included most of their comments on the margins as a new genre to promote a critical dialogue in our readers. Also, Belkacem TAIEB and Matthew Shumski submitted short commentaries that I included, below, at the end of this article as Appendix I and II. Jim Cresswell shared the manuscript with his undergraduate psychology students, and one student volunteered to add her commentary. Shelly Price-Jones shared it with her international undergraduate students studying English at a South Korean university. Twenty-one of them chose to provide a video reply. I selected a few of them that attracted my attention. Finally, I chose to address some of the issues brought in the presented critical commentaries either as my reply on the margins or at the end of this special issue. This should not be taken as “the final word” in the debate, but rather a dialogic response inviting other responses in the authors and in the audience.

Performance Funding and Management in Higher Education: The Autonomy Paradox and Failures in Accountability

Performance funding is a specific method to manage performance by tying public funding to performance rather than to inputs identified by the organization. Since the 1980s, many countries have adopted some version of performance funding in the higher education sector as part of marketization processes and in response to increased competition, making it a major issue in higher education policy. This paper develops a theoretical framework that utilizes a network-related principal-agent framework to detect the possible origins of the failures in most versions of performance funding in higher education. The framework specifies the conditions required for effective monitoring and effort maximization. Nevertheless, we show that such conditions rarely exist in most higher education systems. Thus, performance funding creates an “autonomy paradox” that ultimately explains the failures in accountability related to performance funding. This unexpected and unwelcome outcome calls for a reexamination of this approach. We recommend expanding the collection of performance information to include inputs and capabilities and creating various mechanisms that connect specific solutions to specific problems.

Autonomy and the Ownership of Our Own Destiny: Tracking the External World and Human Behavior, and the Paradox of Autonomy

Research on autonomy exhibits a constellation of variegated perspectives, from the problem of the crude deprivation of it to the study of the distinction between personal and moral autonomy, and from the problem of the role of a “self as narrator”, who classifies its own actions as autonomous or not, to the importance of the political side and, finally, to the need of defending and enhancing human autonomy. My precise concern in this article will be the examination of the role of the human cognitive processes that give rise to the most important ways of tracking the external world and human behavior in their relationship to some central aspects of human autonomy, also to the aim of clarifying the link between autonomy and the ownership of our own destinies. I will also focus on the preservation of human autonomy as an important component of human dignity, seeing it as strictly associated with knowledge and, even more significantly, with the constant production of new and pertinent knowledge of various kinds. I will also describe the important paradox of autonomy, which resorts to the fact that, on one side, cognitions (from science to morality, from common knowledge to philosophy, etc.) are necessary to be able to perform autonomous actions and decisions because we need believe in rules that justify and identify our choices, but, on the other side, these same rules can become (for example, as a result of contrasting with other internalized and approved moral rules or knowledge contents) oppressive norms that diminish autonomy and can thus, paradoxically, defeat agents’ autonomous capacity “to take ownership”.

The Stressful Implications of Remote E-Working: Evidence from Europe

This paper investigates the importance of different modes of spatial flexibility as well as of the distinction between autonomy and discretion to find plausible explanations of the so-called autonomy paradox, which maintains that the more the job autonomy that remote e-workers have the greater the effort they put into their work with adverse effects on work-related stress. Using multiple regressions, we test the hypotheses regarding the direct influence of autonomy, discretion and work intensification as well as their interaction effects on occupational stress in two subsamples of 1.380 home-based e-workers and 2.574 mobile ones drawn from the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey. The main findings are as follows. Home-based e-workers perceive that autonomy (namely over work goals) directly decreases occupational stress and buffers work intensification (i.e. autonomy over work goals and in the organizational choices of their department/company). In the context of remote e-work, discretion is more likely to boost the stressful impact of work intensification when work is mobile. At the same time, we do not find that autonomy increases work intensification, neither among mobile e-workers, nor among home-based e-workers (for whom it buffers the adverse impact of work intensification). In summary, this study does not confirm the existence of an autonomy paradox associated with remote e-work. Contrarily, it suggests that such a paradox is more likely to surface when research relies on conceptual frameworks that ambiguously define autonomy in terms of what should be more properly conceptualized as discretion.

Paradox of Autonomy: explaining flaws in South American security regionalism

This article addresses the South American difficulties in the consolidation of regional security mechanisms, developing an analytical model called the “paradox of autonomy.” This model was developed through the application of inductive and deductive methodological criteria, based on the observation of recent historical reality, in order to attain generalizable lessons from a relevant case for South American international relations. Also using rational analytical approaches that allow their construction within the framework of rational action problems. From the observation on the emergence and performance of the South American Defense Council, it was identified that the allowing conditions for a novel mechanism of regional (collective) autonomy for security, paradoxically offered opportunities for the exercise of national (individual) autonomy. The article concludes that, although the conditions for the paradox of autonomy are difficult to overcome in cases of security regionalism initiatives, there are possibilities to do so. The key would be in less ambitious institutional designs that recognize the inherent difficulties for institutional regional security cooperation in South America.

\u201cIt\u2019s not a life of war and conflict\u201d: experienced therapists\u2019 views on negotiating a therapeutic alliance in involuntary treatment

BackgroundWorking alliances are considered to be essential to treatment, and they represent a robust predictor of positive treatment outcomes. In a working alliance, a patient and therapist agree upon treatment decisions, which can raise a series of challenges when patients are in involuntary treatment. The aim of this study was to research how therapists experience negotiating a working alliance with patients with serious mental illnesses who are subjected to coercive treatment.MethodsUsing a qualitative approach, we conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with experienced therapists in a Norwegian mental health care setting. Transcripts were analysed using a team-based thematic analysis method.ResultsTwo interrelated major themes and five sub-themes were identified: (1) between coercion and care; (a) the ease of coercion, (b) the paradox of autonomy, and (c) the coercion as care; and (2) imperative treatment and interpersonal dilemmas; (a) this is happening between us and (b) when we do not meet in the middle.ConclusionWe conclude that the therapists exhibited a will to consider their patients’ goals and methods, but only when they were in agreement, and they ultimately made treatment decisions themselves. Further, patient autonomy seems to come second in therapist assessments of needs for care; consequently, we question to what degree the working alliance as a defined concept of mutual agreement is present in the involuntary treatment we investigated.

Performance of the South American Defense Council Under Autonomy Pressures

This article evaluates the performance of the South American Defense Council, based on the rational institutional design and the concept of the operability of alliances. The trajectory of the Council between 2009 and 2018, is examined through a theoretical approximation inspired by neoclassical realism and by applying the descriptive inference method of process tracing. The results indicate that in almost a decade, the Defense Council of the Union of South American Nations did not achieve full operability according to its institutional design. The evidence suggests that aspirations of national autonomy undermined the regional security autonomy project. The article affirms that the presence of a South American security regionalism problem resulting from national and regional autonomy tensions generated a paradox of autonomy.

Institutional arbitration: harmony, disharmony and the ‘Party Autonomy Paradox’

Party autonomy has always been regarded as one of the basic axioms on which the international arbitral process is built. In institutional arbitration, the respect for the parties' autonomy is endangered by the autonomy of the arbitral institution. Allowing institutional autonomy to prevail in these circumstances leads to the “party autonomy paradox”: by agreeing to institutional arbitration as an exercise of party autonomy, the parties would at the same time agree to limit that very same autonomy. This article examines the various scenarios in which such a conflict may arise and seeks to strike the right balance beween the respect for the parties’ will and the autonomy of the arbitral institution.

The Autonomy Paradox: How Night Work Undermines Subjective Well-Being of Internet-Based Freelancers

Nonstandard work schedules have important consequences for workers in the new economy. Using unique data on the work times of Internet-based freelancers, specifically, self-employed professionals participating in a Russian-language online labor market ( N = 4,280), the authors find that working at night has adverse effects on workers’ subjective well-being as measured by satisfaction with work–life balance, life satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. Night work has differential effects on freelancers’ well-being based on gender, partnership status, and caregiving responsibilities. Highlighting the autonomy paradox, the authors’ findings document how freelancers’ discretionary application of a flexible schedule to work at night consequently undermines their well-being.

Paradoxes of Autonomy and Exceptionalism in Molière and Madame de Lafayette

The seventeenth century, in Europe, saw the rise of modern individualism: of the myth that humanity is composed of autonomous, competitive self-seekers who belong to society only in order to moderate the effects of their “natural” rapacity. Simultaneously, the modern epistemology that posits a detached, rational subject, acquiring definitive knowledge in order to manipulate a passive world of objects, arose and developed. This is the individual whom Stephen Greenblatt famously called «self-fashioning». There are repressed paradoxes at the heart of this synthesis of the autonomous individual and the transcendent subject: the competitive individualist is motivated by self-interested desire, but the dominant modern conception of rationality requires a subject capable of transcending desire and the body, and competitive self-interest can be pursued only in the social context. The attempted radical separation of subjectivity from the body is, according to David Le Breton, an artifact of early modern Europe. Recent research in linguistics, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology undermines these myths of autonomy and objectivity, emphasizing the entanglement of the mind with emotions, the body, and the social group. The article finds these “new” insights anticipated by Molière and Madame de Lafayette, whose works dramatize both the ambitions of the emerging individualists and the paradoxes inherent in those ambitions. Molière mocks a gallery of would-be autonomous subjects trying to escape reciprocity, emotion, and the body. In La Princesse de Clèves, Madame de Lafayette delves equally deeply into the tensions that arise when ambition inspires delusions of exceptionality.

The Paradox of Autonomy: Japan’s Vernacular Scholarship and the Policy Pursuit of “Super Global”

Japan’s humanities and social science scholarship has retained its commitment to the national language and local readership over the past two decades despite a policy-driven shift away from the old norm of distinctive independence once termed “opting out” of the game. Analysis of academic publications in two disciplines in a public research university from the 1990s to the early 2010s indicates little change in language or medium: an overwhelming majority are written in Japanese and published in national periodicals and books. The article unveils the paradox of autonomy in Japan’s academia by examining the continued commitment to locally relevant research at the expense of global recognition vis-a-vis the government’s declaration to make some of the nation’s top universities “super global.” Amidst the global fad to join the ranks of the world’s top-ranked universities, the Japanese government’s quest is likely to bring mixed consequences for domestic higher education institutions. In particular, the study points out an increasing risk of compartmentalization and erosion of vernacular research that demands a serious policy reappraisal.

The paradox of autonomy and recognition

Thoughts on trust and merit in software team culture.

Instaurer la "juste distance." Autonomie, justice et vulnérabilité dans l'oeuvre de Paul Ricœur

Comment surmonter le repli sur soi afin de venir en aide et de rendre justice aux autres, proches et lointains? “Instaurer la juste distance,” telle est l'injonction que formule Ricœur pour répondre au paradoxe de l’autonomie et de la vulnérabilité, et réintroduire une conception éthique – et non plus seulement procédurale – de la justice au cœur même de l’action politique. Cet article montre comment la compréhension de la justice dans la perspective de la vulnérabilité invite à considérer ensemble la violence coextensive aux rapports sociaux et aux conflits politiques, et la restauration de la puissance d’agir appelée par de tels contextes. Pensée tour à tour comme différence (altérité à soi), écart (reconnaissance de chacun) et intervalle (interprétation créatrice de sens), la “juste distance” que Ricœur appelle de ses vœux s’appuie sur une topographie symbolique du bien commun qui établit un rapport d’implication entre le sujet et autrui et les rend interdépendants.

Knowledge work intensification and self-management: the autonomy paradox

In the analysis of the sustainability of knowledge work environments, the intensification of work has emerged as probably the single most important contradiction. We argue that the process of knowledge work intensification is increasingly self-driven and influenced by subjectification processes in the context of trends of individualisation and self-management. We use a qualitative case study of a leading multinational company in the information and communications technology sector (considered to be ‘best-in-class’) to discuss this intensification and its linkage with self-disciplining mechanisms. The workers studied seem to enjoy a number of resources that current psychosocial risk models identify as health promoting (e.g. autonomy, learning, career development and other material and symbolic rewards). We discuss the validity of these models to assess the increasingly boundaryless and self-managed knowledge work contexts characterised by internalisation of demands and resources and paradoxical feelings of autonomy. Knowledge work intensification increases health and social vulnerabilities directly and through two-way interactions with, first, the autonomy paradox and new modes of subjection at the workplace; second, atomisation and lack of social support; third, permanent accountability and insecurity; and finally, newer difficulties in setting boundaries.

The Paradox of Autonomy and Recognition

Who doesn’t want recognition for their hard work and contributions? Early in my career I wanted to believe that if you worked hard, and added value, you would be rewarded. I wanted to believe in the utopian ideal that hard work, discipline, and contributions were the fuel that propelled you up the corporate ladder. Boy, was I wrong.

Illusio and overwork: playing the game in the accounting field

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand: how and why do experienced professionals, who perceive themselves as autonomous, comply with organizational pressures to overwork? Unlike previous studies of professionals and overwork, the authors focus on experienced professionals who have achieved relatively high status within their firms and the considerable economic rewards that go with it. Drawing on the little used Bourdieusian concept of illusio, which describes the phenomenon whereby individuals are “taken in and by the game” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), the authors help to explain the “autonomy paradox” in professional service firms. Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on 36 semi-structured interviews primarily with experienced male and female accounting professionals in France. Findings – The authors find that, in spite of their levels of experience, success, and seniority, these professionals describe themselves as feeling helpless and trapped, and experience bodily subju...

"Fiefdoms" and co-management: the paradox of autonomy in an experience of democratization of hospital management.

This study aimed to analyze the implementation of Management Committees and Production Units in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro based on the views of the actors responsible for this process, focusing on the issue of autonomy of the subjects involved in care delivery. This case study adopted a qualitative clinical psychosociological research approach using mainly semi-structured interviews. The management arrangements were valued by the interviewees principally as a way of increasing worker commitment, since the inclusion of workers in the Management Committees is likely to widen decision-making capacity and, at the same time, make staff more committed to care delivery. On the other hand, workers mentioned resistance arising from a struggle to maintain the concentration of power within the professional categories, and the challenge of dealing with differing conflicts of interests. The study suggests that the Management Committees and Production Units should include possibilities of addressing conflicts and intersubjective processes to avoid becoming excessively idealized and ineffective spaces.