Job Autonomy in a Multiple Team Membership Context: within- and Between-team Autonomy as Two Distinct Sources of Autonomy Experience and their Relationship with Job
Satisfaction
Lisanne Boschloo (s2543184) University of Groningen
Department of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior Nettelbosje 2, 9747 AE Groningen, The Netherlands
E-mail: L.boschloo@student.rug.nl
Author Note
The present paper is my master’s thesis and is written under the supervision of L. Maxim Laurijssen. Correspondence concerning this thesis should be addressed to Lisanne Boschloo,
L.boschloo@student.rug.nl
Abstract
Work increasingly occurs in multiple teams simultaneously. Consequently, scholars have become interested in when MTM is effective, as this is mixed in previous literature. This research aims to advance our understanding of the boundary conditions under which MTM is effective and does so from a job autonomy perspective. This study considers the role of job autonomy in teams and partitions it into between-team (scheduling) and within-team (work methods and decision-making) autonomy. Importantly, this research predicts that autonomy variety moderates the effects of within-team autonomy on job satisfaction via autonomy experience. The results indicated that there is no direct effect between both forms of job autonomy and job satisfaction. However, the relation between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction was fully mediated by autonomy experience. Drawing from assimilation and contrast theory, it is proposed that within-team autonomy yields stronger effects under low autonomy variety, however, only a trend has been found.
Keywords: MTM, Job Autonomy, Within-team Autonomy, Between-team Autonomy, Autonomy Experience, Autonomy Variety, Job Satisfaction
Job Autonomy in a Multiple Team Membership Context: within- and Between-team Autonomy as Two Distinct Sources of Autonomy Experience and their Relationship with
Job Satisfaction
Within organizations, an emerging phenomenon is that employees work in multiple teams simultaneously, which is referred to as multiple team membership (MTM) (O’Leary, Mortesen & Woolley, 2011). Previous research concluded that it is still unclear when and why MTM is particularly beneficial both for employees and the organization (Van de Brake, Walter, Rink, Essens, & van der Vegt, 2018). Since 65% of all knowledge workers participate in more than one team at the same time (O’Leary et al., 2011), it is important to understand when and why MTM is advantageous. This research proposes that job autonomy – the extent to which employees have freedom regarding to scheduling their work and how they carry out their work (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006) – is an important factor that can advance our understanding of MTM (Figure 1).
Previous research hints at the importance of job autonomy for MTM. In team research generally, job autonomy is linked to increased job satisfaction (Humphrey, Nahrgang &
Morgeson, 2007). Related research showed that team autonomy may be beneficial and detrimental. For example, Langred (2000) showed that a team’s autonomy to schedule and self-organize work freely may yield benefits, but that it may come at the expense of employees’ individual-level autonomy. Thus, similar to MTM, job autonomy in teams has found to be beneficial as well as detrimental (Langfred, 2000). The present research extends this to an MTM context, in which employees may experience a tension between their
experience of freedom in time allocation in teams they are part of – between-team autonomy – and their freedom regarding how they carry out work and make decisions within those teams – within-team autonomy (Morgeson & Humprey, 2006). To understand when within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy may be beneficial for employees’ job satisfaction, this
research investigates the mediating role of employees’ subjective autonomy experience and the moderating role of autonomy variety.
Research on balanced need satisfaction research (Sheldon & Niemic, 2006) suggests that employees’ overall autonomy experience may be an aggregate of different types of autonomy. In that sense, both between-team autonomy and within-team autonomy are important sources of employees’ autonomy experience.
More importantly, drawing from mental construal theory (Bless & Schwarz, 2010), it is proposed that autonomy variety moderates the link between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction via employees’ autonomy experience (Figure 2). Autonomy variety refers to differences in employees’ experience of within-team autonomy across the teams they are part of (cf. O’Leary et al., 2011). Mental construal theory showed that people tend to exaggerate negative differences, which is further supported by prospect theory (Tversky & Kahneman, 1979) and negativity bias theory (Ito, Larsen, Smith & Cacioppo, 1998). This research suggests that employees’ experience of autonomy within one team is influenced by how they compare it against the autonomy they perceive in other teams (Shin & Grant, 2019; Neal, Ballard, & Vancouver, 2017). Specifically, under high autonomy variety, it is proposed that employees will be less satisfied with their job compared to lower variety. This is, because under high autonomy variety, employees will exaggerate the teams in which they experience relatively low autonomy. Under low autonomy variety, this disparity between higher and lower levels of autonomy across the teams they are part of is less pronounced and should affect employees’ autonomy experience less negative.
Taken together, this research applies an autonomy perspective to advance our understanding of when MTM is particularly beneficial to employees and, therefore, the organization they work in. This research extends the MTM and autonomy literature by dividing job autonomy into within-team and between-team autonomy, and by showing how
both relate to job satisfaction via overall autonomy experience. Typical job autonomy research focuses on the overall experience of autonomy, whereas this research considers employees’ experience of autonomy across teams they are concurrently part of, which acknowledges the reality that employees work across multiple contexts simultaneously (Neal et al., 2017).
Multiple Team Membership
Teams are groups of interdependent employees who have responsibility for a common goal or outcome (Sundstrom, De Meuse & Futrell, 1990). According to Milgrom and Roberts (1992), working in teams enables employees to use available resources more effectively which increases their productivity and their mutual learning. This is beneficial for both the organization and their employees. Although the general perception is that employees mostly work in one team at a time. Nowadays, many individuals are part of multiple teams
simultaneously, which is called multiple team membership (MTM). Organizations implement MTM to enhance individual and team learning (O’Leary et al., 2011). However, being part of multiple teams at the same time can be experienced as complex and difficult by employees, and research has shown mixed results on whether MTM is actually truly beneficial for organizations and their employees (Van de Brake et al., 2018).
In particular, O’Leary and colleagues (2011) showed that MTM can be both beneficial and detrimental to organizations and their employees. MTM can be beneficial for employees because working in multiple teams, and thus with various people, can enhance mutual learning (O’Leary et al., 2011). During MTM, employees work with multiple people at the same time which enables them to easily discuss and exchange different ideas and perspectives with each other. MTM may also burden employees, who may find dealing with variations in teams, people, and tasks cognitively demanding. One reason for this is that employees are required to focus on numerous tasks at the same time in multiple contexts. This is found to
lower general well-being at work (Lam, 1995). This research proposes that job autonomy may facilitate MTM by providing employees tools to deal with the many variations, tasks, and demands inherent to MTM (cf. O’Leary et al., 2011).
Job Autonomy
Job autonomy is a broadly discussed topic in the field of organizational behavior because job autonomy is an important aspect of both work design and employee motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2017; Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2011). Job autonomy can be defined as employees’ freedom to make their own choices during their work (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006) and can be subdivided into three interrelated aspects. First, work scheduling autonomy refers to the freedom employees have to schedule their own work. Second, work methods autonomy refers to the freedom employees have to decide what kinds of methods, and procedures been used during work. Third, decision-making autonomy refers to the freedom employees have to make, and influence decisions at work. Importantly, even though these aspects tend to correlate quite strongly, Humphrey and colleagues (2007) showed in their meta-analysis that they exert unique effects.
Job autonomy is generally associated to positive outcomes. Humprey and colleagues (2007) concluded in their meta-analysis that job autonomy is positively linked to important employee outcomes, such as intrinsic job motivation, and job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is the evaluative judgment employees have about their work. Moreover, job autonomy tends to reduce undesirable work outcomes, such as absenteeism, job stress, exhaustion, and burnout (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017).
Job Autonomy in MTM: within- and Between-Team Autonomy
The autonomy literature typically focuses on employees’ overall autonomy experience in their job. However, in an MTM context, employees experience of autonomy may vary across the teams they are part of. Additionally, in an MTM context, employees may
experience two forms of job autonomy. Within-team autonomy refers to the extent to which employees have the freedom to choose work methods, and to make decisions within the teams they are part of. Between-team autonomy refers to the freedom employees have to allocate their time freely to fulfill certain tasks within a team. In that sense, between-team autonomy is a form of scheduling autonomy and enables employees to decide how much time they spent on tasks in each team. It is important to acknowledge this distinction as related research supports the idea that employees’ experience of autonomy may vary across contexts, such as teams (Neal et al., 2017). Related research by Shin and Grant (2019) showed that employees experience of high intrinsic motivation in one context led them to perceive other contexts as comparatively uninteresting and boring. Consequently, employees were less productive in the other contexts. In this study, it is proposed that this also applies to job autonomy in an MTM context.
Importantly, this research uses insights from balanced need satisfaction research (Sheldon & Niemic, 2006) to propose that within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are important sources of employees’ subjective experience of autonomy.
Consequently, this research considers the mediating role of employees’ subjective experience of autonomy between within-team and between-team autonomy and job satisfaction. Research on balanced need satisfaction (Sheldon & Niemic, 2006) showed that employees’ satisfaction of their need for autonomy can be strengthened by multiple factors. This seems to suggest that within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are additive. Thus, it is proposed that both forms of autonomy are positively linked to employees’ experience of autonomy (c.f. Van der Doef & Maes, 1999).
Taken together, in an MTM context, job autonomy can ease the context switching between teams for employees as it provides employees with more freedom to when and how they spend their time on the multitude of teams they are part of (Pluut, Flestea, and Curseu,
2014). One aspect of MTM that employees tend to evaluate negatively is the fragmentation of time across teams (O’Leary et al., 2011). Job autonomy can give employees the opportunity to allocate their time and attention in a way that matches their personal needs and schedules (O’Leary et al., 2011). Additionally, employees who work in multiple teams at the same time feel like entrepreneurs who have freedom to choose which teams to participate in (Mortensen, Woolley & O’Leary, 2007).
This study predicts that higher levels of within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are positively linked to higher job satisfaction due to the increase of the level of autonomy experience. Consequently, it is predicted that:
Hypothesis 1: Within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are two distinct sources of autonomy experience.
Hypothesis 2 a: Within-team autonomy is positively related to job satisfaction.
Hypothesis 2 b: Between-team autonomy is positively related to job satisfaction.
Hypothesis 3 a: Autonomy experience mediates the link between within-team autonomy, and job satisfaction.
Hypothesis 3 b: Autonomy experience mediated the link between between-team autonomy, and job satisfaction.
Importantly, the relative importance, or contribution, of within-team autonomy on job satisfaction depends on the experience of employees’ autonomy within one team, compared to the levels of autonomy they experience in other teams they are participating in, which is reflected by autonomy variety.
Moderating Role of (MTM) Autonomy Variety
Team variety is the level of disparity between teams in terms of tasks, technologies, and locations (O’Leary et al., 2011). This research proposes that employees who partake in MTM will also experience autonomy variety. Being part of multiple teams implies that
employees will experience different levels of autonomy across the teams they are part of.
Previous research seems to suggest that people form their evaluations around relevant comparison targets (Goffin & Olson, 2011). Similar, employees’ experience of autonomy in one context is based on how they experience autonomy across other contexts (cf. Shin &
Grant, 2019). Therefore, employees in an MTM context are likely to compare the level of autonomy in one team (within-team autonomy) with the degree of freedom they receive in other teams. How employees make this comparison is expected to influence their job satisfaction via their subjective overall autonomy experience. This comparison target is reflected by autonomy variety. Therefore, this research considers the moderating role of autonomy variety between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction via autonomy experience.
Autonomy variety is important to study in an MTM context, because overall autonomy experience obscures this variation across teams. For example, suppose two employees who are both part of two teams. Employee A has a within-team autonomy score of 5 in team one and graded team two with a 9, averaging 7. Employee B has a within-team autonomy score of respectively 6 and 8, also averaging 7. The average within-team autonomy score is equal for both employees. However, autonomy variety is larger for employee A than for employee B.
Drawing on mental construal theory (Bless & Schwarz, 2010), it is theorized that autonomy variety is related to assimilation and contrast effects. Mental construal theory states that people form evaluations based on how they compare focal information with comparison information (Goffin & Olson, 2011). People who evaluate focal information more favorably than a comparison target display downward comparison, whereas people who evaluate focal information less favorably than a comparison target display upward comparison.
Mental construal theory unveiled an interesting effect: people tend to downplay positive differences, whereas people tend to exaggerate negative differences (i.e. contrast
effects). Assimilation effect is a cognitive bias that deforms the perception of something when people compare it, by reducing the differences between them. A contrast effect is a cognitive bias that deforms the perception of something when people compare it, by enlarging the differences between focal information and a comparison target (Bless & Schwarz, 2010). This theory provides insight to how autonomy variety impacts employees’ experience of their autonomy in MTM.
Within MTM, employees experience different levels of autonomy across teams they are part of. Under lower levels of autonomy variety (all teams have a relatively similar level of within-team autonomy), the expectation is that employees should assimilate since the pieces of information are similar and homogeneous, and no particular team stands out in terms of employees’ experience of relatively high or low autonomy (Figure 2). It can be stated that employees experience most autonomy when average within-team autonomy is high, and autonomy variety is low, which is expected as beneficial (Figure 2). Conversely, employees’
autonomy experience is lowest when average within-team autonomy is lowest, and autonomy variety is lowest, because, overall, employees experience the fewest level of autonomy
(Figure 2).
Under higher levels of autonomy variety (all teams have relative dissimilar levels of within-team autonomy), the expectation is that employees contrast and enlarge differences in autonomy. This is further supported by the prospect theory (Tversky & Kahneman, 1979), which also maintains that people give more weight to negative information than positive information since negative information exerts stronger effects than positive information.
Similarly, the negativity bias effect (Ito et al., 1998) argues that negative thoughts and emotions have a greater effect on an individual’s psychological state than positive ones. This suggests that negative information will generally have a stronger impact on employees’
cognition than positive information. Consequently, it is expected that higher levels of
autonomy variety are less pleasurable since employees face teams in which they can make their own choices regarding work (high within-team autonomy) and where freedom while working is limited (low within-team autonomy) at the same time. It is further expected that the negative feelings or disappointment of receiving low levels of autonomy in one team are stronger that the positive feelings or appreciation of having higher levels of autonomy in the other team. Thus, the negative feelings take precedence and weigh more heavily than the positive ones. If autonomy variety is high, different levels of autonomy between teams will be contrasted, and enlarged and thus is autonomy experience lower compared to a situation where autonomy variety is low. A higher level of autonomy variety is linked to a lower level of overall autonomy experience, and therefore, job satisfaction.
Thus, the expectation will be that if employee A graded team one with a 5 and team two with a 9 and employee B graded the teams respectively with a 6 and 8, both averaging 7.
Employee A will score lower on overall autonomy experience compared to person B due to higher autonomy variety (Figure 2). Based on the assimilation and contrast effect, this study states that person A enlarges differences in autonomy compared to person B, and therefore score lower on overall autonomy experience.
Hypothesis 4: The relationship between within-team autonomy via overall autonomy experience to job satisfaction is stronger when autonomy variety is low.
Method Respondents and Procedure
A total of 271 respondents who are part of multiple teams at the same time (32.5%
male, 67.5% female), all in the age from 18 to 72 (M= 33.59; SD= 9.11), completed the questionnaire that was designed for this research. The questionnaire was in English, and all recruited respondents were from the United States or the United Kingdom. The respondents worked on average 38.88 hours per week (SD = 7.01) and had their current job title on
average for 4.39 years (SD = 4.77). The average years of total work experience was 14.47 years (SD = 9.17) and they received on average 2.79 years of supervision of their current supervisor (SD = 3.12). The education levels were categorized in Bachelor’s Degree (45.0%), High School (27.3%), Graduate of Professional Degree (23.6%), Master of Business
Administration (2.2%) and Doctorate Degree (1.8%).
The respondents were recruited using the Prolific-platform. Prolific is an organization specialized in online recruitment for representative samples. This organization makes use of pre-screening questions to determine which respondents may fill in the questionnaire. The two criteria that were implemented in the pre-screening questions, were that respondents were part-time or full-time employees who work more than 21 hours per week. Data is used from respondents who are part of at least two teams on the moment of filling in the questionnaire. It was not possible to integrate this second criterium in the pre-screening questions of Prolific, therefore, the questionnaire starts with the announcement to stop participating if respondents were not part of multiple teams at the same time. To ensure that all respondents were active in an MTM context the first question was ‘Do you work in two or more teams simultaneously in your current job?’. 94.4% of the respondents confirm this question. Respondents who are part of just one team were excluded from statistical analyses. At the end, 169 respondents (62.4%) work in two teams simultaneously, 70 respondents (25.8%) were part of three different teams, 16 respondents (5.9%) were part of four teams, and 16 respondents (5.9%) were involved in five or more teams.
The questionnaire was completed online which took on average 13 minutes (SD = 6.5). The anonymity of the respondents was guaranteed and they all signed informed consent before starting the questionnaire. The questionnaire contains questions about within-team autonomy, between-team autonomy, overall autonomy experience, and job satisfaction. The
end of the questionnaire consisted of demographic questions and the questionnaire concludes with thanking the respondents.
Measures
Within-team Autonomy. Within-team autonomy is operationalized as the average
freedom to choose work methods and to make decisions within the teams they are part of.
Within-team autonomy was measured using the scale from the Work Design Questionnaire developed by Morgeson and Humphrey (2006). The questions were adapted to fit an MTM context. The scale consist of three items and one example item is: ‘In this team, I am allowed to make a lot of decisions on my own’ (for all items, see Appendix A). Respondents answered on a seven-point Likert-type rating scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Respondents had multiple within-autonomy scores per team, depending on the number of teams they are in. These scores were aggregated into one within-autonomy score per team (M = 5.03; SD = 1.06). A high within-team autonomy score means that respondents had much freedom to make their own decisions and choice of work methods in their teams1.
Between-team Autonomy. Between-team autonomy is operationalized as the average
freedom employees experience in the allocation of time within the teams. Between-team autonomy was measured with the use of the work scheduling autonomy scale from the Work Design Questionnaire (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006). The items were adapted to fit an MTM context. An items of this scale is ‘In this team, I am allowed to make my own decisions about how to schedule my work’. The scale consists of two items and the respondents answered on a seven-point Likert scale (1= strongly disagree, 7= strongly agree). Respondents had multiple between-autonomy scores per team, depending on the number of teams they are in. These scores were aggregated into one within-autonomy score per team (M = 4.88; SD = 1.13)1.
1 Cronbach’s Alpha is irrelevant for this variable since within-team autonomy/between-team autonomy consists of aggregated data. Respondents reported multiple within-team autonomy/between-team autonomy scores depending on the number of teams they are part of, and therefore it is not possible to calculate the Cronbach’s Alpha.
Overall Autonomy Experience. Employees’ overall autonomy experience in their job
– not across teams – was measured using a seven-point Likert-type rating scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). This scale was developed by Van den Broeck, Vansteenkiste, De Witte, Soenens, and Lens (2010). One example question is: ‘The tasks that I have to do at work are in line with that I really want to do’. There are four items in total and the scores were averaged into one single score for autonomy experience (M = 5.27; SD = 1.14). The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient for the items that were used was 0.83.
Job Satisfaction. Job satisfaction was measured with the use of the job satisfaction
scale of Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablinsky and Erez (2001). Job satisfaction was measured with three items, which respondents answered on a Likert-type rating scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). An example question is ‘I feel real enjoyment in my job’. The scores on each item were averaged into a single job satisfaction score (M = 5.16; SD
= 1.35). The corresponding Cronbach’s Alpha score for the job satisfaction scale is 0.94.
Autonomy Variety. Autonomy variety (cf. O’Leary et al., 2011) was measured with
the use of the items that determine the score for within-team autonomy. Every team a respondent is part of was graded with a single within-team autonomy score. Calculating the standard deviation of all these loose scores per respondent will indicate the level of variety within those scores. A high standard deviation means that there is much variation in the level of autonomy between the teams, or in other words, there is high autonomy variety (M = 1.10;
SD = 0.79).
Results Preliminary Analyses
The descriptive statistics and correlations of the constructs are shown in Table 1.
There were no remarkable correlations between the used constructs and/or the control variables. Analyses were conducted with and without the control variables sex, age,
education, working hours per week, tenure, work experience, and years of supervision from the current supervisor. The control variables did not have a discernable impact on the results except for Hypothesis 4. This will be further clarified below. Analyses are reported without control variables (with the exception of Hypothesis 4). Results of the statistical analyses are shown in Table 2. The complete tested research model, with corresponding coefficients, is shown in Figure 3.
Hypothesis Testing
The first hypothesis states that within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are two distinct sources of overall autonomy experience. First, there was a preliminary analysis which revealed large correlation between the two aggregated variables, r = .86, p < .001.
However, a large correlation does not necessarily mean that two constructs are equivalent or that they are, in fact, the same construct (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003). Since the MTM nature of this data, a regular factor analysis could not be conducted, because respondents’ number of answers per job autonomy item varied based on how many teams they were part of. For example, a respondent who was part of three teams provided three scores per job autonomy question, whereas a respondent who was part of five teams provided five scores per job autonomy question. Therefore, per job autonomy question, a mean score was calculated. Thus, every single job autonomy score was the respective mean of that single item per team. An employee who was part of three teams had the average of three items per job autonomy item as the score for that item. Similar approaches have been used previously (cf. van Mierlo, Rutte, Vermunt, Kompier, & Doorewaard, 2007)2. Next, a principal
component analysis was conducted with direct oblimin rotation. The factor solution clearly showed support for one factor. First, the eigenvalue for the first factor (4.84) was almost five
2 Ideally, a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis should be conducted. However, this is outside the scope of a master’s thesis. Therefore, this simpler method was used.
times the default cutoff value (1.00), and the eigenvalue for the second factor was far below this cutoff value (.38). Second, all factor loadings were relatively high (between .89 and .94).
To discern this, a regression with autonomy experience as the dependent variable were conducted to distill the unique contribution of both constructs. First, a stepwise regression consisting of two steps was performed. In step 1, between-team autonomy was the
independent variable. Between-team autonomy explained 23.1% variance, F(1,269) = 82.21, p < .001. In step 2, within-team autonomy was added and the explained variance increased to 33.3%, F(2,268) = 68.51, p < .001. The change in R2 is 0.10, F(1,268) = 42.21, p < .001. This showed that within-team autonomy explains additional above and beyond between-team autonomy. Interestingly, step 2 also revealed that only within-team autonomy is significantly related to autonomy experience, b = .68, SEb = .10, t(268) = 6.50, p < .001. Between-team autonomy did not have a significant relation with autonomy experience, b = -.05, SEb = .10, t(268) = -.53, p = .60. This seems to suggest that only within-team autonomy is important for employees’ autonomy experience. Although the within-team autonomy added variance above and beyond between-team autonomy, suggesting that they may be two distinct scales, only within-team autonomy was significantly linked to employees’ autonomy experience. Once within-team autonomy was added to the model, between-team autonomy was no longer significantly linked to employees’ autonomy experience. Therefore, Hypothesis 1 is not supported.
Hypothesis 2a stated that within-team autonomy is positively related to job satisfaction. Furthermore, Hypothesis 3a stated that the relation between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction is mediated by autonomy experience. Both hypotheses were tested with the use of Hayes’ PROCESS-macro (model 4). In this model, job satisfaction was the dependent variable, within-team autonomy was entered as the independent variable, autonomy experience was the mediator, and between-team autonomy was a control variable.
Results showed that there is no direct effect between within-team autonomy and job
satisfaction, b = .15, SEb = .11, t(267) = 1.39, p = 0.16. However, autonomy experience was positively linked to job satisfaction, b = .81, SEb = 0.06, t(267) = 13.51, p = <.001. There was a significant indirect effect of within-team autonomy on job satisfaction via autonomy
experience b = .55, SEb = .10, BCa CI [.37, .74]. In other words, there is no direct effect between within-team autonomy to job satisfaction. Therefore, Hypothesis 2a is rejected.
However, there is a significant indirect effect between within-team autonomy and job
satisfaction via autonomy experience, which means that there is full mediation. Thus, there is only a relationship between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction via autonomy
experience. Hypothesis 3a is accepted.
Hypothesis 2b stated that between-team autonomy is positively related to job
satisfaction and Hypothesis 3b expected that autonomy experience mediated the link between between-team autonomy, and job satisfaction. To test whether between-team autonomy is positively related to job autonomy and if this relation is mediated by autonomy experience a Hayes’ PROCESS-macro model 4 analysis was performed. Job satisfaction is the dependent variable, between-team autonomy is the independent variable, autonomy experience is the mediator, and within-team autonomy is added as control variable. Results revealed that there is no direct significant relation between between-team autonomy and job satisfaction, b = - .05, SEb = .10, t(267) = -0.51, p = .61. Furthermore, autonomy experience does not mediate the relation between between-team autonomy and job satisfaction, b = -.04, SEb = .08, BCa CI [-.21, .12]. Thus, both Hypotheses 2b and 3b were not supported.
Hypothesis 4 stated that the relationship between within-team autonomy via overall autonomy experience to job satisfaction is stronger when autonomy variety is low. To test this hypothesis a moderated-mediation regression was performed (Hayes’ PROCESS-macro model 7). At first, the focus is on the moderated model (Hayes’ PROCESS-macro model 1).
In this model, autonomy experience was the dependent variable, within-team autonomy was the independent variable, autonomy variety was the moderator and between-team autonomy was a control variable. Results revealed that within-team autonomy is positively related to autonomy experience, b = .65, SEb = .11, t(266) = 5.99, p = <.001. Furthermore, the
interaction effect between within-team autonomy and autonomy variety is not significant, b = -.13, SEb = 0.07, t(266) = -1.83, p = .07. However, significant levels between .05 and .10 can be classified as statistical trends. In other words, there is a pattern that higher autonomy variety has a negative effect on autonomy experience. Since it is not significant it is important to be careful with the interpretation of this result.
The second part of testing Hypothesis 4 consists of a moderated-mediation analysis (Hayes’ PROCESS-macro model 7). In this moderated-mediation model, job satisfaction is the dependent variable, within-team autonomy is the independent variable, autonomy
experience is the mediator, autonomy variety is the moderator and between-team autonomy is the control variable. The results showed that there is no direct relationship between within- team autonomy and job satisfaction, b = .15, SEb = .11, t(267) = 1.39, p = .16. However, autonomy experience was significantly and positively related to job satisfaction, b = 0.81, SEb
= 0.06, t(267) = 13.51, p = <.001. It can be concluded that an increase in autonomy experience goes hand in hand with an increase in job satisfaction. With regard to the conditional indirect effect, the results showed that autonomy variety does not have a
moderating effect, b = -.11, SEb = .08, BCa CI [-.26, .03]. In other words, the moderator had no changing effect on the mediation effect of within-team autonomy on job satisfaction via job autonomy. Thus, autonomy variety had an influence on autonomy experience but autonomy variety does not change the relation of within-team autonomy on job satisfaction via autonomy experience. Finally, the interaction was no longer a trend after adding the seven control variables. Further analysis showed that adding education into the model eliminated the
interaction effect. The significant level rises above .10 after adding education as control variable. Education partially affects the strengthening effect that autonomy variation has on the relationship between within-team autonomy and autonomy experience, b = -.12, SEb = .74, t(265) = -1.62, p = .11. Hypothesis 4 is not accepted, but it can be said that a trend has been found.
Discussion
This study focused on job autonomy in an MTM context. It was proposed that job autonomy in an MTM context could be split up into two different forms of job autonomy. The first form is within-team autonomy, this is the freedom to employees to choose work methods and to make decisions within a team. The second form is called between-team autonomy, this is the freedom to employees to choose the amount of time they allocate to the teams they are part of. Within an MTM context, it was expected that both forms of job autonomy are two distinct sources of how employees experience their overall autonomy. The results revealed that overall autonomy within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are not two distinct sources of overall autonomy experience, therefore Hypothesis 1 was not accepted.
Hypotheses 2a and 2b stated that both within- and between-team autonomy are positively related to job satisfaction, both of these hypotheses are not supported by the data.
Furthermore, Hypothesis 3a and 3b extended Hypothesis 2 by predicting that these positive relations were mediated by autonomy experience. Results show that this was only the case for the relation between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction. This relationship was fully mediated by overall autonomy experience, which means that more within-team autonomy leads to more autonomy experience and result, only in this way, to increased job satisfaction.
Finally, it was hypothesized that the relationship between within-team autonomy and autonomy experience is stronger when autonomy variety is low. This last hypothesis could not be accepted. However, a trend was found. Carefully, it can be stated that high levels of
autonomy variety are negatively associated with autonomy experience, and thus job satisfaction. Importantly, the trend disappeared after controlling for education.
Theoretical Implications
First, within MTM research, the field of autonomy has not been studied yet. This is remarkable since pacing issues and time pressure, as consequence of MTM, are closely related to autonomy. In order to bridge this gap, this study attempted to advance the MTM understanding by focusing on job autonomy in an MTM context. Previous research on job autonomy focused on the experience of overall autonomy (Häusser et al., 2010; Humprey et al., 2007; Morgeson, Delaney-Klinger, & Hemingway, 2005). Job autonomy is often split up into three subscales; scheduling autonomy, work methods autonomy, and decision-making autonomy (Humprey et al., 2007). This division is mainly applied to employees who work in one single team or context. This study distinguishes itself from other studies since it
introduced the concepts of within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy. Within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are more suitable in the MTM literature since
employees who are involved in MTM work in multiple teams simultaneously and experience different levels of autonomy within and between the teams they are part of. Shin and Grant (2019) conclude that high intrinsic motivation in one context lowers performance in contexts that are less intrinsically motivating which supports the idea that employees experience different levels of autonomy in different contexts, such as teams. The data does not support the idea that within-team and between-team autonomy are distinct. This is in contrast with previous research, which seems to suggest that job autonomy can often be subdivided (Humphrey et al., 2007). This is also not in agreement with research on balanced need
satisfaction (Sheldon & Niemic, 2006). However, even though within-team and between-team autonomy seem to be the same underlying construct, within-team autonomy may be more strongly linked to employees’ overall autonomy experience than between-team autonomy
since the results of this study showed that between-team autonomy was no longer significant related to autonomy experience after adding within-team autonomy. This means that only within-team autonomy determines whether employees are satisfied with their degree of autonomy. In other words, freedom in decision-making and selection of work methods are two important factors which influence employees’ overall experience of autonomy in their work.
Second, this study contributes to the literature by uncovering that the relation between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction is fully mediated by overall autonomy experience.
In other words, the relation between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction only occurred via autonomy experience. Employees who experience more within-team autonomy experience more overall autonomy, and are therefore, more satisfied with their job in general. Thus, giving employees more freedom regarding which methods they use during work or involved in decision-making does not necessarily make employees (more) satisfied with their job. It is the fact that they experience more autonomy in general, and are therefore more satisfied with their work. This is in line with Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan (2017), who state that employees who see themselves as more autonomous individuals are more satisfied with their job.
Finally, autonomy variety in an MTM context is a relatively new research area.
Previous MTM research focused for instance on productivity and learning (O’Leary et al., 2011) or effective organizational conditions (Mortensen et al., 2007). Not much studies collect data where respondents answered questions about the different teams they part of. In this research, respondents report the levels of autonomy for each single team. This approach is crucial, especially in MTM research since employees face different levels of within-team autonomy simultaneously. Autonomy variety is not applicable to between-team autonomy since the between-team autonomy scores of teams are interdependent since time that is spent in one team cannot be spent in another. Therefore, this study focused just on variety in within-
team autonomy. This research suggests that the relationship between within-team autonomy and autonomy experience is stronger when employees receive the same amount of autonomy in all teams they are part of, and thus autonomy variety is low. This is in line with the mental construal theory (Bless & Schwarz, 2010). The mental construal theory explains how
individuals integrate new information into existing cognitive schemas. This research applied this theory to a work context and investigate how multiple contexts have influence on
employees (c.f. Shin & Grant, 2019). Bless and Schwartz (2010) state that individuals enlarge differences if information is heterogeneous. As a consequence, employees exaggerate the negative feelings (the teams with lower within-team autonomy) and are less focused on the positive feelings (the teams with higher within-team autonomy). Therefore, they feel less autonomous overall and thus less satisfied with their job (Ito et al., 1998; Tversky &
Kahneman, 1979).
Practical Implications
More practically, within-team autonomy is an important factor for employees to feel satisfied with their overall level of autonomy and, in turn, with their job. This is in line with previous research that employees like to be autonomous individuals, who can self-direct and self-organize their own work (Deci et al., 2017). However, results of this study revealed that only within-team autonomy is positively linked to job satisfaction via employees’ overall autonomy experience. Thus, organizations should ensure that employees can decide about what work methods they use and that employees are involved in decision making. This is in agreement with the results from the study of Grant and Parker (2009), who concluded that employees like that outcomes depend on their efforts, initiatives, and decisions. Employees’
freedom towards their scheduling and work pacing appears to be subservient to this. This seems to suggest that employees care more about the content and meaningfulness of their work than to the extent that they can freely organize their work. Related research came up
with an explanation that work methods autonomy and decision-making autonomy are more related to task significance. Grant (2008) showed that task significance is an important source to increase employees job perception and job performance. Task significance can be defined as the extent to which a piece of work has influence on other individuals within and outside the organization. Thus, the meaningfulness of work, which can be established by decision- making autonomy and work methods autonomy, is more important to job satisfaction than scheduling autonomy. Following this reasoning, this can explain why between-team
autonomy is not related to job satisfaction, because it does not affect the contents or meaning of work but rather when the same work is completed. To conclude, organizations should focus their policies mainly on involving employees in decision making and giving their employees the freedom to select their own work methods.
Furthermore, this research seems to suggest that high levels of autonomy variety have negative effects on the relation between within-team autonomy and autonomy experience.
Employees who experience much variety in autonomy receive much freedom in one team and have the feeling of being controlled in the other team, and are therefore, less satisfied with their overall autonomy and thus less satisfied with their job in general. This is in line with the assimilation and contrast effect researched by Bless and Schwarz (2010). Individuals gave more weight to their negative feelings than the positive ones (Ito et al., 1998; Tversky &
Kahneman, 1979). This could be helpful for organizations during developing new policies or during team composition. For organizations, it is important to notice that employees do not experience too much autonomy variety. In other words, managers should take into account that employees are not part of teams with low levels of within-team autonomy and high levels of within-team autonomy at the same time. Otherwise, this will influence employee’s
perception of the team where they receive lower autonomy, which is of influence on their overall autonomy experience and thus job satisfaction.
One important thing to notice is that the moderating trend of autonomy variety disappears after adding education level. An explanation for this may be that lower educated employees can cope more easily with autonomy variety compared to higher educated individuals. This is in line with the fact that higher educated people care more about job autonomy since they want recognition for their expertise (Joshi, 2014), which can be
accomplished by a rise in autonomy (Finn, 2000). McGraw (1978) showed that rewards, such as providing employees with more autonomy, increase the productivity of highly educated employees and decrease the performance of the people who perform easier tasks, which are in general lower educated employees. To conclude, autonomy is more important to highly educated employees. Therefore, mainly organizations that work with highly educated personnel should be aware of this fact.
Strength and Limitations
One important limitation of this research is that during the data collection the whole world was under the spell of the COVID-19 virus. In the first instance, it was planned to collect data with a group of four HRM master students. This study was proposed to be a multi-level study where teams and their supervisor fill in a questionnaire (field-data). Due to the COVID-19 virus the data collection has been cancelled and it had been decided to use the Prolific-platform to gather the data. Consequently, supervisors were no longer part of the data collection and this study just relies on self-reported measurements of employees who are involved in MTM. According to Podsakoff and colleagues (2003) self-report measurements are sensitive to biases. Another limitation that is connected to the above, is that the
respondents for this study were recruited by Prolific and were all from the United Kingdom and the United States. Both countries were hit hard by the virus and it can be assumed that the respondents’ work situations were not the same as usual. Both countries were in lockdown during data collection and respondents were perhaps more negative about their job since they
were not allowed to work, were forced to work from home or were unsure about whether they can keep their job. This is something that should be taken into account while interpreting the results of this study.
A second limitation that should be mentioned, is that for the moderation effect a trend was found which not can be considered as a significant effect. This could be a consequence of a sample that was not large enough (Agresti, & Finlay, 2009). If more respondents were included in the sample, perhaps stronger conclusions could have been drawn. MTM-effects tend to be small and often require large sample sizes to detect them (cf. O’Leary et al., 2011).
One of the strengths of this research is that the measures which have been used during this study were reliable. All measures are widely used and were applied in pretentious studies.
Previous research operationalized all constructs and created reliable measuring instruments.
The measures have been validated by previous research. Additionally, the items of each construct score high on the Cronbach’s Alpha test, which means that items measure the same construct (Mehmetoglu, & Jakobsen, 2016). Therefore, it can be stated that the constructs have high internal consistency, which is an indicator of construct validity.
Directions for Future Research
A recommendation to future researchers is to perform a multi-level study. A multi- level approach is perhaps able to reveal how within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are related to each other. Besides, future research could investigate what effect within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy have on job performance. This study concluded that there is no direct relation between within- and between-team autonomy and job satisfaction. Perhaps, another work outcome, such as job performance will reveal different results. It can be argued that job autonomy improves job performance due to enlarged role breadth (Morgeson et al., 2005). Increased autonomy recognized that employees possess more skills, and knowledge, which motivates them to try out new tasks. Employees who have the
opportunity and capabilities to do more during their work, show higher job performance (Morgeson et al., 2005). Future research should determine the strength and importance of this relationship.
A second recommendation that can be made as a result of this research is that
researchers should investigate how within-team autonomy can be enhanced within teams. The results of this study showed that within-team autonomy is an important factor that can
enhance employees’ autonomy experience. Subsequently, the experience of autonomy is crucial for employees’ job satisfaction. Thus, making sure that employees get enough within- team autonomy is relevant for both the organization and their employees. This research concluded that within-team autonomy consists of decision-making autonomy and work methods autonomy. Future research should investigate how decision-making autonomy and work methods autonomy can be best implemented and applied during work and how this is related to different types of work. However, researchers and practitioners should take into account that too much autonomy variety between teams must be prevented.
Finally, it was beyond the scope of this thesis to conduct a proper validation study to discern the role of within-team and between-team autonomy. Job autonomy is used as one overall construct as well as three distinct constructs – scheduling, work-methods, and decision-making autonomy (Humphrey et al., 2007). This study seemed to suggest that job autonomy is, in fact, one overall construct, as there was no empirical evidence for the
proposed within-team and between-team distinction. However, the results of the present study seem to suggest that within-team autonomy is more strongly linked to employees’ overall autonomy experience than between-team autonomy. This seems to suggest that job autonomy may be modelled as a latent second-order construct, in which within-team autonomy is a first- level construct that is more strongly linked to overall job autonomy than between-team
autonomy. Future research should elucidate whether job autonomy is a second-order construct.
Conclusion
To conclude, MTM becomes more common in the workplace nowadays. This study proposed to get more insights into when and why MTM is beneficial and decided to focus on the degree of job autonomy in multiple teams. Results show that within-team autonomy and between-team autonomy are not two different sources of autonomy experience. This study confirms that the relation between within-team autonomy and job satisfaction is fully mediated by autonomy experience. Thus, it is crucial that employees who work in an MTM context get the freedom to decide which methods they want to use and are involved in decision making to ensure that they are satisfied with their overall autonomy, in this way job satisfaction will be enlarged. Furthermore, there is a weak relation (a trend) found that argued that employees who perceive much variety in the different teams they are part of are less content with their autonomy in general. This suggests that employers should keep the level of variety in different teams in mind.
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Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, Cronbach’s Alpha, and Correlations
M SD (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
(1) Within-team autonomy
5.02 1.05 (0.97) (2) Between-team
autonomy
4.88 1.12 0.86** (0.83) (3) Autonomy
experience
5.27 1.14 0.58** 0.48** (0.83)
(4) Job satisfaction 5.19 1.34 0.48** 0.39** 0.74** (0.94) (5) Autonomy
Variety
1.10 0.79 -0.37** -0.33** -0.19** -0.13** - (6) Sex
-Male -Female
32.5%
67.5%
-
0.04 0.00 0.01 0.06 -0.04
(7) Age 33.59 9.11 0.03 0.05 0.06 0.14* -0.03 -0.08
(8) Education -High school -BSc/BA -MSc/MA -MBA -PhD
27.3%
45.0%
23.6%
2.2%
1.8%
-
0.05 0.09 -0.07 -0.05 -0.11 0.06 -0.02
(9) Hours work/week
38.88 7.01 0.07 0.08 -0.06 -0.01 -0.01 -0.20** -0.07 -0.06
(10) Tenure 4.39 4.77 -0.03 -0.03 0.01 0.08 -0.04 -0.02 0.41** -0.22** -0.11
(11) Work experience
14.47 9.17 -0.01 -0.01 0.05 0.16* -0.05 -0.07 0.92** -0.15* 0.04 0.45**
(12) Years supervision
2.79 3.12 0.10 0.06 0.09 0.07 -0.08 0.09 0.27** -0.14* -0.10 0.54** 0.31**
Note. N = 271. Cronbach’s alphas are displayed on the diagonal. * p < .005; ** p < .001.
Table 2
Results of Statistical Analyses
Autonomy experience
Variable b SE t(269)
Constant 2.11 .27 7.62**
Within-team autonomy .63 .05 11.71**
Autonomy experience
Variable b SE t(269)
Constant 2.86 .27 10.48**
Between-team autonomy .49 .05 9.07**
Autonomy experience
Variable b SE t(268)
Constant 2.12 .28 7.62**
Within-team autonomy .68 .10 6.50**
Between-team autonomy -.05 .10 -.53
Job satisfaction
Variable b SE t(267)
Constant .42 .30 1.39
Within-team autonomy .15 .11 1.39
Between-team autonomy -.05 .10 -.51
Autonomy experience .81 .06 13.51**
Autonomy experience
Variable b SE t(266)
Constant 5.50 .48 11.43**
Within-team autonomy .65 .11 5.99**
Between-team autonomy -.06 .10 -.56
Autonomy variety -.02 .09 -.29
Within-team autonomy * Autonomy variety
-.13 .07 -1.83*
Conditional indirect effect
Condition Boot
effect
Boot SE LLCI ULCI
Indirect effect within- team autonomy on job satisfaction
.55 .10 .37 .74
Indirect effect between- team autonomy on job satisfaction
-.04 .08 -.21 .12
Low autonomy variety .61 .11 .39 .84
High autonomy variety .43 .12 .20 .66
Note. N=271. *p < .10; ** p < .01
Figure 1. Conceptual research model.
Figure 2. MTM autonomy configurations.
Within-team Autonomy
Between-team Autonomy
Overall Autonomy Experience
Job Satisfaction (MTM)
Autonomy Variety
Figure 3. Complete tested research model. Paths for within-team autonomy were controlled for between-team autonomy and paths for between-team autonomy were controlled for within-team autonomy using PROCESS-macro (Hayes, 2017) model 4. Indirect effect between brackets. ** = significant at p < .01 level or significant bootstrapped confidence interval, * = significant at p < .10 level.
Within-team Autonomy
Between-team Autonomy
Overall Autonomy Experience
Job Satisfaction (MTM)
Autonomy Variety
-.05 (-.04) .15 (.55**)
-.13* (.11*)
-.81**
Appendix A Within-team autonomy questionnaire
In this team, …
1) … I am allowed to make a lot of decisions on my own.
2) … I am allowed to make decisions about what methods I use to complete my work.
3) … I am allowed to decide on my own how I go about doing my work.
Response scale: 1= Strongly disagree, 7= Strongly agree.
Between-team autonomy questionnaire In this team, …
1) … I am allowed to make my own decisions about how to schedule my work.
2) … I am allowed to plan how I do my work.
Response scale: 1= Strongly disagree, 7= Strongly agree.
Autonomy experience questionnaire
1) I feel free to express my ideas and opinions in this job.
2) I feel like I can be myself at my job.
3) The tasks that I have to do at work are in line with what I really want to do.
4) I feel free to do my job the way I think it could be best done.
Response scale: 1= Strongly disagree, 7= Strongly agree.
Job satisfaction questionnaire 1) I feel real enjoyment in my job.
2) Most days I am enthusiastic about my job.
3) I feel fairly well satisfied with my job.
Response scale: 1= Strongly disagree, 7= Strongly agree.
