The Autonomy Paradox: The Implications of Mobile Email Devices for Knowledge Professionals
Open accessAbstract
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.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Exposure to algorithmic control and incentivisation may cause tensions for content creators because they feel limited in their autonomy.
“exposure to algorithmic control and incentivisation may cause tensions for content creators because they feel limited in their autonomy”
From Content Creators Between Platform Control and User Autonomy: The Role of Algorithms and Revenue Sharing (2023) · cites this paper as Mazmanian et al. 2013
Cites
The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor
Abbott, A. (1988) · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226189666.001.0001 · Cited by 7,733 · see citing works
10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization
Orlikowski, W. J., & Scott, S. V. (2008) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/19416520802211644 · Cited by 2,571 · see citing works
Self-citationBarley, S. R. (1986) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2392767 · Cited by 2,315 · see citing works
E-mail as a source and symbol of stress
Barley, S. R., Meyerson, D. E., & Grodal, S. (2011) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.1100.0573 · Cited by 637 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Systematically reviewing remote e-workers’ well-being at work: a multidimensional approach
Charalampous, M., Grant, C. A., Tramontano, C., & Michailidis, E. (2019) · European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology · doi:10.1080/1359432x.2018.1541886 · Cited by 743 · see citing works
Petriglieri, G., Ashford, S. J., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2019) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.1177/0001839218759646 · Cited by 744 · see citing works
Lebovitz, S., Lifshitz-Assaf, H., & Levina, N. (2022) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.2021.1549 · Cited by 632 · see citing works
Molino, M., Ingusci, E., Signore, F., Manuti, A., Giancaspro, M. L., Russo, V., Zito, M., & Cortese, C. G. (2020) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su12155911 · Cited by 532 · see citing works
Please respond ASAP: Workplace telepressure and employee recovery
Barber, L. K., & Santuzzi, A. M. (2015) · Journal of Occupational Health Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0038278 · Cited by 502 · see citing works
Virtual Work: Bridging Research Clusters
Raghuram, S., Hill, N. S., Gibbs, J. L., & Maruping, L. M. (2019) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/annals.2017.0020 · Cited by 426 · see citing works
Wang, B., Liu, Y., & Parker, S. K. (2020) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/annals.2018.0127 · Cited by 377 · see citing works
Richter, A. (2020) · International Journal of Information Management · doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102157 · Cited by 225 · see citing works
O’Leary, M. B., Wilson, J. M., & Metiu, A. (2014) · MIS Quarterly · doi:10.25300/misq/2014/38.4.13 · Cited by 191 · see citing works
Effects of new ways of working on work hours and work location, health and job-related outcomes
Nijp, H. H., Beckers, D. G. J., van de Voorde, K., Geurts, S. A. E., & Kompier, M. A. J. (2016) · Chronobiology International · doi:10.3109/07420528.2016.1167731 · Cited by 121 · see citing works
Corporate smart phones: professionals' conscious engagement in escalating work connectivity
Cavazotte, F., Heloisa Lemos, A., & Villadsen, K. (2014) · New Technology, Work and Employment · doi:10.1111/ntwe.12022 · Cited by 121 · see citing works
Mindfulness training in the workplace: Exploring its scope and outcomes
Johnson, K. R., Park, S., & Chaudhuri, S. (2020) · European journal of training and development · doi:10.1108/ejtd-09-2019-0156 · Cited by 121 · see citing works
The job demands-resources model as a theoretical lens for the bright and dark side of digitization
Scholze, A., & Hecker, A. (2024) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2024.108177 · Cited by 116 · see citing works
Hislop, D., Axtell, C., Collins, A., Daniels, K., Glover, J., & Niven, K. (2015) · Information and Organization · doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2015.10.001 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
Becker, W. J., Belkin, L. Y., Conroy, S. A., & Tuskey, S. (2021) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/0149206319890655 · Cited by 73 · see citing works
“In fact, qualitative research has suggested that norms and expectations of constant availability are an important concern at the interface of e-mail and work-life boundaries (Mazmanian et al., 2013).”
BackgroundHödl, T., & Myrach, T. (2023) · Business & Information Systems Engineering · doi:10.1007/s12599-023-00808-9 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Ribeiro, B., Meckin, R., Balmer, A., & Shapira, P. (2023) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/j.respol.2022.104607 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Day, A., Barber, L. K., & Tonet, J. (2019) · The Cambridge Handbook of Technology and Employee Behavior · doi:10.1017/9781108649636.022 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Manager-employee psychological contracts: enter the smartphone
Obushenkova, E., Plester, B., & Haworth, N. (2018) · Employee Relations · doi:10.1108/er-02-2017-0040 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
A multi-perspective framework for research on (sustainable) autonomous systems
Beck, R., Dibbern, J., & Wiener, M. (2022) · Business & Information Systems Engineering · doi:10.1007/s12599-022-00752-0 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Bloom, P., & Śliwa, M. (2022) · Human Relations · doi:10.1177/0018726721996763 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Rebooting One’s Professional Work: The Case of French Anesthesiologists Using Hypnosis
Bourmault, N., & Anteby, M. (2023) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.1177/00018392231190300 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mazmanian, M., Orlikowski, W. J., & Yates, J.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- Organization Science
- Published
- 2013-10
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1337-1357
- ISSN
- 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5455
- OpenAlex
- W2132254598
- Cited by
- 1,364
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 231 · 2025: 165 · 2024: 140 · 2023: 155 · 2022: 148 · 2021: 125 · 2020: 118 · 2019: 71 · 2018: 66 · 2017: 42 · 2016: 33 · 2015: 32 · 2014: 28 · 2013: 9
- FWCI
- 98.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Organization Science (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0085725)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Work-Family Balance Challenges
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Technostress in Professional Settings
- Keywords
- knowledge workers, individual autonomy, work flexibility, professional responsibility, workplace norms, work-life boundaries
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
