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Divestitures and other forms of organizational separation are not commonly associated with continuity and ongoing collaboration in inter-organizational relationships. Instead, separation is often equated with terminating relationships and gaining independence. Here, the authors argue that achieving separation does not require terminating relationships and that ongoing collaboration between separating entities may actually contribute to successful separation. The authors base this argument on the assertion that the objective of organizational separation is to achieve organizational autonomy for all entities involved and that separating entities can enable each other’s development of autonomy while remaining interdependent. The authors also discuss how collaborative separation may contribute to a range of benefits, as well as why it may nevertheless fail to emerge in practice. In this respect, the authors consider the relevance of ethical perspectives and emotional dynamics related to feelings of (dis)respect, (dis)trust, pride and shame. The authors conclude by discussing activities that may contribute to, and undermine, effective collaborative separation.

This study aims to examine the effect of publics' legitimacy evaluations on Arthur W. Page's conceptualization of “reasonable freedom of action” by breaking it into two parts: (1) perceived organizational autonomy and (2) trust in the organization.

This study conducted an online experiment using a 2 (legitimacy: low, high) × 2 (legitimacy type: institutional, actional) between-subjects design. Measured variables included perceived organizational autonomy and trust.

Organizations acting in their own self-interest while ignoring community norms and expectations were perceived to be exercising higher levels of organizational autonomy and have lower levels of trust. The interaction between legitimacy type and level had an effect on perceived organizational autonomy and trust.

Public's view their relationships with organizations from a perspective that prioritizes responsibility and conformity to community norms and expectations. Also, organizations have more to lose by acting in their own self-interest to resolve institutional legitimacy concerns and more to gain by handling them in a way that includes the public interest than when they are managing an actional legitimacy situation.

Societal norms, values and beliefs, which may have accommodated, or even supported, an organization's approach to doing business in the past, can change over time, calling into question an organization's legitimacy and its ability to operate in the public interest. As a result, organizational leaders need the Chief Communication Officer to help them understand current societal norms, values and beliefs.

This study addresses a core assumption of the organization–public relationship paradigm that has not yet been studied empirically. It also expands the understanding of organizational autonomy from a public perspective and examines the effect of legitimacy on organizational autonomy and trust.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the proportion of skilled jobs in subsidiaries is influenced by resource gaps created by subsidiary development.

This paper develops a range of propositions that connect the constructs of effective autonomy and organisational relationships with subsidiary employment. Propositions are built on an extensive literature review based on such approaches as the resource‐based view, transaction cost economics, network approach, and institutional theory.

The framework developed in the paper suggests that a higher proportion of employment in skilled jobs in subsidiaries is most likely in cases where subsidiary entrepreneurship, role specialization, and absorptive capacity are higher. Conversely, the proportion is likely to be lower in cases of increased institutional distance from the parent company.

The conceptual model can help parent company managers assess the likely effects of developments in effective autonomy and organisational relationships in their subsidiaries. Subsidiary managers can assess the possible impact of such factors as development of entrepreneurial activities, specialization within the multinational corporation supply chain and enhancement of absorptive capacity on the proportion of skilled jobs.

This paper is the first to describe subsidiary development from a skilled job perspective. It further develops the concept of autonomy and introduces the term “effective autonomy”.

As multinational corporations are becoming larger and more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to balance between the need for overall standardization in the multinational corporation (MNC) and the need for local responsiveness. In order to allow subsidiaries to react on challenges and opportunities within their local markets, they should be granted with a certain level of decision-making autonomy. However, this freedom can facilitate a misalignment of activities among the headquarters and its subsidiaries.

This study suggests that subsidiaries should be granted with the autonomy to pursue own activities. There should, however, be limits to their independence, which should be aligned through a dialogue between the headquarters and the subsidiary. This study finds a positive correlation between strategic and operational autonomy and subsidiary performance when these are combined with a strong intra-organizational network relationship. Furthermore, the study argues that within operational autonomy it is important to distinguish between everyday activities that do not need approval from headquarters, and activities that should be decided in collaboration between the headquarters and the subsidiary. Subsidiaries that are operating in technological complex markets should be granted with the autonomy to take advantage of inter-organizational network relationships in order to exploit local knowledge and capabilities. However, this poses the risk of the subsidiaries losing connectivity to the MNC. In order to reduce this risk, the headquarters should combine such initiatives with a strong collaboration with its subsidiaries.

By establishing a strong intra-organizational network relationship, autonomy can have a positive effect on subsidiary performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in the relationships between job autonomy and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and the moderating role of organizational strategy in those relationships.

The hypotheses were tested by a moderated mediation model using multilevel survey data that were collected in South Korea in 2008.

This study found that POS mediated the relationship between autonomy and OCB regardless of organizational strategy, and that job autonomy was more strongly related to POS in companies with an analyzer strategy than with a defender strategy. The results also indicated that the indirect relationship between job autonomy and OCB via POS was stronger in companies with an analyzer strategy than in companies with a defender strategy.

This study provides a new mechanism in the relationship between job autonomy and OCB using social exchange theory. An analyzer strategy should not be treated as a hybrid of defender and prospector strategies.

While all organizations may benefit from providing employees with job autonomy regardless of organizational strategy, companies with an analyzer strategy in particular should provide their employees with sufficient autonomy.

The present study bridged the gap between the macro and micro approaches through multilevel analyses. This study is unique in that it examined the vertical fit between job autonomy and organizational strategy while focussing on individual employee outcomes.

This paper aims to focus on participation in the workplace and examines the relative importance of different dimensions of job control in relation to subjective well-being and organizational commitment. These dimensions are job autonomy (within a given job), functional support (from supervisor and colleagues) and organizational level decision latitude (shop-floor consultancy on process improvements, division of labor, workmates, targets, etc.). Interaction with work intensity is looked at as well.

Measurements and data were taken from the European Working Conditions Survey, 2010. The paper focusses on salaried employees only. The sample was further limited to employees in workplaces consisting of at least 50 workers. There are 2,048 employees in the final sample, from Denmark, Ireland, The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the UK. In this paper, the focus is not on differences between countries, and adding more countries would have introduced too many country characteristics as intermediate variables.

In the regression analyses, functional support and organizational level decision latitude showed stronger relations with the outcome variables than job autonomy. There was no relation between work intensity and the outcome variables. Two-way interactions were found for job autonomy and organizational level decision latitude on subjective well-being and for functional support and organizational level decision latitude on organizational commitment. A three-way interaction, of all job control variables combined, was found on organizational commitment, with the presence of all types of job control showing the highest organizational commitment level. No such three-way interaction was found for subjective well-being. There was an indication for a two-way interaction of work intensity and functional support, as well as an indication for a two-way interaction of work intensity and organizational level decision latitude on subjective well-being: high work intensity and low functional support or low organizational level decision latitude seemed to associate with low well-being. No interaction was found for any dimension of job control being high and high work intensity.

Although this study has all the limitations of a cross-sectional survey, the results are more or less in accordance with existing theories. This indicates that organizational level decision latitude matters. Differentiation of job control dimensions in research models is recommended, and so is workplace innovation for healthy and productive jobs.

Most theoretical models for empirical research are limited to control at task level (e.g. the Job Demand-Control-Support model of Karasek and Theorell. The paper aims at nuancing and extending current job control models by distinguishing three dimensions/levels of job control, referring to sociotechnical systems design theory (De Sitter) and action regulation theory (Hacker) and reciprocity (Akerlof). The policy relevance regards the consequences for work and organization design.

The purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of autonomy in the effect of a pro-innovation organizational climate and supervisor supportiveness (SS) on the innovative behavior (IB) of nurses.

The sample of this cross-sectional, correlational study consisted of 332 nurses, who were selected, on the basis of the convenience sampling method, from among the nurses working at two public university hospitals in Istanbul. The data of the study were collected between February and May of 2015. Descriptive analysis and linear regression analysis were used for data analysis, and the bootstrapping method was applied to test the significance of the mediating role.

The model used for examining the mediating role of autonomy was found to be statistically significant, as it explained 36 percent of the variance of IB. When the significance of the mediating role was tested, its effect on both innovation climate and SS was observed to be significant.

The obtained results indicated that a pro-innovation organizational climate and SS functioned as premises for autonomy. In turn, the rise in autonomy level that served to innovative climate and SS increased the IB of the nurses through boosting their autonomy level. From these results, it can be argued that nurses with a high level of professional autonomy can create innovative outputs and provide added value through the IB they practice in providing patient care and general health services.

For non-profit organizations (NPOs) external funding is an essential resource. Studies highlight how control is attributed to funders and so external funding threatens the autonomy of the recipient organization. The purpose of this study is to investigate how external control can be structured and exercised, and to explore how control interacts with organizational autonomy.

The research is based on interviews and participant observations with NPOs and their funders over a period of time. It reports from four different funding-relations: contract-based, social investment, gift-funded and civil society–public partnership. The concept of organizational discretion is used to analyse how control and autonomy are interconnected in these relationship.

The analysis illustrates the value in exposing the different discretionary boundaries related to external control and how control can become a sparring partner in the organization's striving for autonomy. A concluding argument is that control and autonomy are each other's companions rather than antagonists. The study leads us to question a general assumption that NPOs strive to avoid resource dependence and external control but instead may use such control to develop strategies for independence and self-realization.

The empirical material is unique as it includes voices of recipient organizations and funders, and offers a comparison of different controlling-relations. The study presents an innovative analytical framework based on the concepts of discretionary space and reasoning, which supports a critical discussion regarding the idea of external control as detrimental to the autonomy of NPOs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine three perspectives on autonomy: communication management or public relations autonomy, autonomy in management theory, and the autonomy of moral philosophy.

These arguments for autonomy are combined and studied to ascertain their impact on: the contribution of the communication function to strategic management of the organization, and, the enactment of an ethics counselor role by public relations. This research examines autonomy in communication at two global organizations through 43 interviews, observation, and document analysis. Factors influencing and contributing to autonomy are discussed.

Autonomy was found to be necessary for optimal contribution to strategic management and acting as ethical counsel in the public relations function. In both ways, autonomy contributes to the stature of the communication function within an organization and the development of public relations as a profession. Autonomy should be high on the research agenda of public relations scholars and a primary goal of communication professionals.

Communication managers should work for autonomy, inclusion in the strategic management team, and a rational approach to problem solving.

This research provides important theoretical value and enormous implications for communication professionals. Many conclusions about autonomy can be drawn from this conceptual and empirical research. Using systems and excellence theory as a framework, then building on that basis with empirical research in two world‐wide organizations, the research takes a novel approach in applying and studying the autonomy concept from moral philosophy in modern business. Data show that autonomy is necessary for excellence in communication, defending against encroachment, inclusion in strategic management, using empowering or collaborative management, and enacting the role of ethics counselor. These important implications for communication management have the potential to make business more ethically and socially responsible and to enhance the overall value of the communication function within organizations.

Research examining the influence of organizational factors on entrepreneurial tendencies and performance within organizations is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of organizational structure and work autonomy on entrepreneurial tendencies, locus of control and performance.

Data were obtained online using validated self-report questionnaires in a sample of 181 currently employed individuals.

The results showed organizational structure components to be related to work autonomy and performance, but not to individual-level variables. However, work autonomy related to entrepreneurial tendencies and locus of control, indicating potential indirect effects of organizational structure on individual-level variables via work autonomy. Entrepreneurial tendencies and locus of control were positively related to performance.

Whilst the mediating effect of a number of individual-level traits has been examined in the past, very little research has looked at how organizational factors may influence entrepreneurial tendencies. Fostering entrepreneurial tendencies in employees may facilitate corporate entrepreneurship and performance within organizations.