Impact of Employee Autonomy

However, the authors note, that existing research slowly and steadily indicated that this view of employee autonomy was incorrect and that, rather than being a negative, autonomy was strongly linked to both organizational and performance benefits. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current research on employee autonomy in an effort to answer two research questions: (1) What is the impact of employee autonomy on the organization; and (2) What is the impact of employee autonomy on worker performance?

Impact of Job Autonomy on the Organization

One of the most current findings regarding employee autonomy and its organizational impact is that autonomy can operate to increase workers' level of commitment to an organization. This finding was observed in a study of nurse job satisfaction conducted by Blegen (1993) who investigated the magnitude of the relationships between nurses' job satisfaction and the variables most frequently associated with job satisfaction.

Blegen's meta-analysis of data from 48 studies with 15,048 workers revealed tha

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was implemented. In an extensive discussion of the attributes of successful organizations, Galagan (1986) describes the development and operation of a manufacturing plant dedicated in equal parts to a profitable product and to the autonomy of the workers who produce it. She notes that since developing the policy of commitment to employee autonomy, profits have escalated as have productivity and performance quality. Galagan provides some recommendations for how organizations can increase employee autonomy. These recommendations include making workers responsible for more than just manufacturing the product, tapping the full potential of all employees, and limiting automation to where it is needed. According to Hart (1988), employee autonomy can help in creating a climate of worker trust for an organization. Specifically, Hart proposes changes in the fundamental assumptions, values, priorities, and reward systems necessary to produce trust-optimizing environments, changes that amount to an "about face" in managing sociotechnical systems. Organizational trust is characterized by Hart as a product of need satisfaction. Personal trust is distinguished from system trust. Three factors of organizational trust are defined: op
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Approximate Word count = 2992
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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