Job control is a person's ability to
influence what happens in their work environment, in particular to influence matters that are relevant to their personal goals. Job control may include control over work tasks, control over the work pace and physical movement, control over the social and technical environment, and freedom from supervision.
Workplace autonomy has been seen as a specialized form of the more general concept of control. Workplace autonomy is the freedom of a person to determine what he or she does at work, and how.
Association with other factors
For
Georges Friedmann, the quality of work depends on the employees'
skills
A skill is the learned or innate
ability
Abilities are powers an agent has to perform various Action (philosophy), actions. They include common abilities, like walking, and rare abilities, like performing a double backflip. Abilities are in ...
and on their capacity to control
decision-making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...
at work.
Robert Blauner
Robert "Bob" Blauner (May 18, 1929 – October 20, 2016) was an American sociology, sociologist, college professor and author. He introduced the theory of internal colonialism.
Biography
He was born in Chicago, Illinois.
Bob spent his high school ...
found that job control is closely linked with
occupational prestige and
job satisfaction
Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentment with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be me ...
.
Job satisfaction and job control tend to be higher for
managerial
Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a government bodies through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administra ...
and
professional
A professional is a member of a profession or any person who work (human activity), works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the partic ...
workers than for unskilled workers.
A meta-analysis of 1986 found an association of high levels of perceived control with "high levels of job satisfaction
�� commitment, involvement,
performance
A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Performance has evolved glo ...
and
motivation
Motivation is an mental state, internal state that propels individuals to engage in goal-directed behavior. It is often understood as a force that explains why people or animals initiate, continue, or terminate a certain behavior at a particul ...
, and low levels of physical symptoms, emotional distress, role stress,
absenteeism
Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation without good reason. Generally, absenteeism refers to unplanned absences. Absenteeism has been viewed as an indicator of poor individual performance, as well as a breach of an ...
, intent to turnover, and
turnover". Similarly, within the
job demands–resources model it is assumed that
resource
''Resource'' refers to all the materials available in our environment which are Technology, technologically accessible, Economics, economically feasible and Culture, culturally Sustainability, sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and want ...
s such as job control counterbalance job strain and to contribute to motivation. In support of this approach, results of a 2003 study suggest that "as job demands increase, high job control is needed to limit fatigue, whereas either high job control or high job social support is needed to enhance
intrinsic work motivation".
Increasing job control is an intervention shown to help counteract
exhaustion and
cynicism in the workplace, which are two symptoms of
occupational burnout
The ICD-11 of the World Health Organization (WHO) describes occupational burnout as a work-related phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. According to the WHO, symptoms include "feelings of e ...
.
Job control has also been linked to the ''meaningfulness'' and the ''manageability'' components of
salutogenesis
Salutogenesis is the study of the origins (''genesis'') of health (''salus'') and focuses on factors that support human health and well-being, rather than on factors that cause disease (pathogenesis). More specifically, the "salutogenic model" w ...
.
See also
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Balanced job complex
Participatory economics, often abbreviated parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impa ...
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Employee engagement
Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An "engaged employee" is defined as one who ...
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Employee monitoring
Employee monitoring is the (often automated) surveillance of workers' activity. Organizations engage in employee monitoring for different reasons, such as to track performance, avoid legal liability, protect trade secrets, or address other securi ...
*
Equality of autonomy Equality of autonomy is a political philosophy concept of Amartya Sen that argues "that the ability and means to choose our life course should be spread as equally as possible across society"—i.e., an equal chance at autonomy or empowerment. Equal ...
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Flexibility (personality)#Work environment
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Occupational health psychology#Demand-control-support model
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Responsible autonomy
Responsible Autonomy (, AR) is a centrist to centre-right political party active in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy.
The party was launched as a "civic list" in support of Renzo Tondo, incumbent President of The People of Freedom in the 2013 r ...
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Workers' control
Workers' control is participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, communists, social democrats, distributists and Christi ...
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Workers' self-management
Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-managed economy, ...
*
Workplace democracy
Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in various forms to the workplace, such as voting systems, consensus, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, and systems of appeal. It can be implemented in a ...
References
{{Aspects of jobs
Control (social and political)
Social influence
Workplace
Employment