The Autonomy Paradox: The Implications of Mobile Email Devices for Knowledge Professionals

By Melissa Mazmanian, Wanda J. Orlikowski, JoAnne Yates. Organ. Sci., 2013

1,044 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Our research examines how knowledge professionals use mobile email devices to get their work done and the implications of such use for their autonomy to control the location, timing, and performance of work. We found that knowledge professionals using mobile email devices to manage their communication were enacting a norm of continual connectivity and accessibility that produced a number of contradictory outcomes. Although individual use of mobile email devices offered these professionals flexibility, peace of mind, and control over interactions in the short term, it also intensified collective expectations of their availability, escalating their engagement and thus reducing their ability to disconnect from work. Choosing to use their mobile email devices to work anywhere/anytime—actions they framed as evidence of their personal autonomy—the professionals were ending up using it everywhere/all the time, thus diminishing their autonomy in practice. This autonomy paradox reflected professionals’ ongoing navigation of the tension between their interests in personal autonomy on the one hand and their professional commitment to colleagues and clients on the other. We further found that this dynamic has important unintended consequences—reaffirming and challenging workers’ sense of themselves as autonomous and responsible professionals while also collectively shifting the norms of how work is and should be performed in the contemporary workplace.

Subfields: Communication, Information Systems and Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ddbde40063c5181bd962e4050803d85ab119dfc4

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Citations in the corpus

Understanding the consequences of public social media use for work (2017, background): “, 2016), and the autonomy paradox (Mazmanian et al., 2013), this study assumes that the increased connectivity associated with social media use, might simultaneously produce demands e i.”
How Does the Use of Information Communication Technology Affect Individuals? A Work Design Perspective (2020, background): “ICT use can also create expectations of constant connectivity—individuals are expected to always keep online and respond to requests, imprisoning them in a “digital cage” (e.g., Cavazotte, Heloisa Lemos, & Villadsen, 2014; Mazmanian et al., 2013).”
Work-Related Communication Technology Use Outside of Regular Work Hours and Work Life Conflict (2014, background): “Rather, some employees may have difficulty curbing their tendency to continually check in with work (due to technological dependency or addiction), and this may lead to “self-inflicted” work life conflict (see Mazmanian et al., 2013).”
Wellbeing Costs of Technology Use during Covid-19 Remote Working: An Investigation Using the Italian Translation of the Technostress Creators Scale (2020, background): “The autonomy paradox assumes that ICTs provides more flexibility and autonomy, which lead workers to work more and to feel controlled [7,75,76].”
Let’s Focus on Solutions to Entrepreneurial Ill-Being! Recovery Interventions to Enhance Entrepreneurial Well-Being (2021, background): “Yet this constant connectivity leads to work intensification, and ultimately drives ill- being (Mazmanian et al., 2013; Pérez- Zapata et al., 2016).”
The Digital Workforce and the Workplace of the Future (2016, background): “…responding to emails during nonwork hours reduces the opportunity for psychological detachment, relaxation, and recovery (Sonnentag, Binnewies, & Mojza, 2008), and ultimately may lead to a norm of constant connectivity that reduces the sense of autonomy (Mazmanian, Orlikowski, & Yates, 2013).”
New Telework, Time Pressure, and Time Use Control in Everyday Life (2019, result): “[56] reported contradictory findings in their study on the relationship between telework and time control.”
The technostress trifecta ‐ techno eustress, techno distress and design: Theoretical directions and an agenda for research (2019, methodology): “maximum availability and would accordingly use IS to ensure that they can be reached by clients (Mazmanian et al. 2013).”