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This study aims to explore the double-edged sword effect of work connectivity behavior after-hours (WCBA) on employees’ occupational mental health. Drawing on job demand-resource theory, the authors examined the double mediating mechanism of work autonomy and work-family conflict on the relationship of WCBA, work engagement and work burnout. At the same time, the authors examined the moderating role of responsiveness from superiors, hoping to clarify how WCBA brings employees positive experiences (engagement) or negative experiences (burnout).

Under the mediating mechanism of work autonomy and work-family conflict, the authors built a dual-path model and moderated mediation model to examine the effect of WCBA on work engagement and burnout. Two-stage paired data were collected from various industries in China by distributing questionnaires to employees. The hypotheses were tested using the structural equation model and the bootstrap test method.

The results showed that WCBA positively affects work engagement and burnout. Work autonomy plays a mediating role both in the relationship between WCBA and work engagement and in the relationship between WCBA and work burnout. In addition, work-family conflict plays a mediating role both in the relationship between WCBA and work burnout and in the relationship between WCBA and work engagement. Responsiveness from superiors not only moderated the relationship between WCBA and work autonomy and between WCBA and work-family conflict but also moderated the mediating effects of work autonomy and work-family conflict.

This study examined the double-edged sword effect of WCBA on employees’ occupational mental health, the dual mediation of work autonomy and work-family conflict and the moderating effect of responsiveness from superiors. This study can enrich the understanding of the effects of WCBA as well as the influential factors and boundary conditions related to employees’ occupational mental health. Organizations (represented by superiors) and individuals were integrated into one model, providing a new perspective for studying WCBA. The research will help managers and individuals gain a comprehensive understanding of WCBA, and how to enhance its positive effects and circumvent its negative effects.

The authors examine the interactive effects of work engagement and work autonomy in enhancing job crafting behaviour and performance.

Dyadic data from a sample of 320 white-collar employees in an Indian manufacturer are analysed through structural equation modelling.

The level of job crafting is highest when both work engagement and work autonomy are high. Job crafting fully mediates the interactive effect of work engagement and autonomy on task performance and partially on contextual performance.

There is value in reviewing organisational constraints on employee autonomy to foster the ways in which highly motivated workers can craft their jobs and, thus, maximise their performance.

This study demonstrates the interactive effects of work engagement and autonomy in enhancing job crafting and, through this mechanism, employee performance.

Crowdsourcing platforms have emerged as an innovative way to generate ideas and solving problems. However, promoting sustained participation among crowdworkers is an ongoing challenge for most crowdsourcing platform providers. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study investigates the impacts of job autonomy on crowdworkers' sustained participation intention.

A survey of 212 crowdworkers from a leading crowdsourcing platform in China was conducted to empirically validate the model.

The empirical results lead to several key findings. First, the taxonomy of job autonomy in crowdsourcing contains three archetypes: work-scheduling autonomy, work-task autonomy, and work-method autonomy. Second, work-scheduling autonomy and work-method autonomy have more significant positive effects on temporal value than work-task autonomy, and this increase in temporal value increases crowdworkers' sustained participation intention. Third, work-task autonomy exerts a stronger influence on hedonic value than work-scheduling autonomy or work-method autonomy, and this increase in hedonic value also increases crowdworkers' sustained participation intention.

This study extends the crowdsourcing literature by examining the formation of crowdworkers' sustained participation and highlighting the role of differential effects of multidimensional job autonomy on crowdworkers' sustained participation. We believe that this study provides actionable insights into measures that promote crowdworkers' sustained participation in the crowdsourcing platform.

This study investigates work and non-work antecedents for the work–life balance (WLB) development of remote employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Longitudinal data (N = 1,146, T1; N = 737, T2) was collected in May–June 2020 and December 2020 in one multinational company (MNC) in Finland. In data analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) with a cross-lagged panel model was utilized. The results revealed that during the pandemic, WLB slightly decreased. The quantitative job demands increased and predicted a decreased WLB at T2. Job autonomy decreased but did not have an effect on WLB development or buffer the negative effect of quantitative job demands on WLB. Time saved from commuting was positively related to WLB development, but the number of children living at home and the age of the youngest child had no statistically significant link to WLB development over time (similar finding for men and women). Although care responsibilities from the gender perspective is not the focus of our study, the additional analysis show that WLB at T1 was more challenging for women the more children they had, or the younger the youngest child was. For men, children did not make a difference for their WLB at T1. This finding indicates that WLB has been more challenging for mothers compared to fathers already when our first data had been collected, and the continuance of the pandemic did not change the situation in any direction. This research contributes to the knowledge about work and non-work related demands and resources as antecedents for WLB development during the pandemic. As a practical implication during the pandemic, the authors suggest that employers should follow development for employees’ WLB as a measure of well-being in remote work. In addition, the workload of remote employees should be followed, and time saved from commuting should be preserved as employees’ non-work time and protected from work-related tasks.

With the prevalence of enterprise social media (ESM), this study examines how the innovative and routine ESM use behaviors in the post-acceptance stage influence the quality and quantity dimensions of information processing (i.e. information equality and information overload), subsequently affecting employee autonomy grounded in the digital information management theoretical (DIMT) framework. This study further explores the moderating effects of communication visibility on the relationships between employee autonomy and each of the two information processing factors.

The proposed theoretical model was empirically validated using survey data of 266 knowledge workers that use ESM in a hybrid working context.

The results demonstrate that innovative and routine ESM use have different impacts on the quality and quantity dimensions of information processing, and information equality (quality dimension) improves employee autonomy as expected, but, surprisingly, information overloads (quantity dimension) as well. ESM communication visibility positively moderates the relationship between employee autonomy and each dimension of information processing.

Prior studies on ESM use widely focused on ESM's positive and negative outcomes and the mechanisms from the perspectives of employees' psychological and cognitive reactions. How ESM use behaviors in the post-acceptance stage empower employee autonomy and allow organizations to leverage the organizations' information technology (IT) investments remains unclear. Drawing on the information processing perspective, this study provides a novel angle to examine how to leverage IT values that stem from ESM use by considering the complementary roles of active and passive information processing.

Previous studies show that sharing leadership in teams offers potential performance benefits across various contexts. This paper aims to investigate moderators of the effectiveness of shared leadership. In particular, it seeks to explore the moderating effects of team work function – manufacturing versus knowledge team work – and team autonomy.

In order to test the hypotheses, the authors conducted hierarchical regression analyses and ran moderated two‐way regression analyses using a field sample of 552 employees comprising 81 teams in a Danish manufacturing company.

Contrary to expectations, the results demonstrated a non‐significant relationship between shared leadership and team performance. However, as expected, work function significantly moderated this relationship such that shared leadership exhibited a negative relationship with manufacturing team performance and a positive relationship with knowledge team performance. Moreover, team autonomy was positively related to performance, and it significantly moderated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance.

The study provides a potentially useful framework for understanding boundary conditions for the effectiveness of shared leadership. However, since the design of the study is cross‐sectional, direct causation cannot be inferred. Moreover, the study took place within a single organization in a Danish context and, therefore, care must be taken in generalizing the findings without additional evidence from further research.

To the authors' knowledge, the study is the first to obtain evidence which indicates that the success of shared leadership may depend on the team work function and the level of team autonomy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level and predictors of work engagement among service sector employees in eight European countries.

The work seeks to discover if job demands and resources, i.e. job autonomy and social support, affect work engagement in differing ways in different countries when socio‐demographical variables and work‐related factors are controlled. The study is based on a statistical analysis of survey data from Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK in 2007 (n=7,867). The data represent four economic sectors: retail trade, finance and banking, telecoms and public hospitals.

The results show that the level of work engagement varies not only between countries but also between those four economic sectors within each country. Additionally, the findings indicate that demands decrease work engagement, while autonomy and support increase it. Although the effects are mainly the same across the countries, the article also points out some exceptions in this regard.

Although the paper is built upon established theories about job demands and autonomy, it uses a newer work engagement approach, produces cross‐national knowledge about work engagement and its predictors. Cross‐national approaches to work engagement are still rare.

Digitalization is changing organizations with positive and negative impacts such as increased autonomy on the one hand and increased surveillance and control on the other hand. In this context, new modes of control occur: in addition to managerial control, new modes of control are multi-directed, stemming from colleagues, customers and underlying algorithms. This paper investigates the interrelation of autonomy and new modes of control in digital work contexts from the workers’ perspectives.

Empirical data are based on a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative interviews with 25 and a quantitative questionnaire with 127 workers from urban food logistics organizations in Germany.

The results show that new modes of control are relevant for work engagement in digital work contexts: managerial and algorithm control are perceived as support. Peer and customer control are perceived as coercion.

Besides investigating the interrelation of autonomy and control and differentiating new modes of control, our study also makes important contributions to the perception of control as support and coercion.

Autonomy has long been established as a critical component of professional work. Traditionally, autonomy has been examined as the extent to which an individual or a professional group controls the decisions and knowledge used in their work. Yet, this framework does not capture the additional work activities that professionals are increasingly expected to perform. Therefore, this chapter argues for theoretically expanding our understanding of professional autonomy by bringing in the concept of articulation work. Using the case of healthcare organisational change, this study assesses how shifts in work practices impact autonomy. Data come from longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit as it underwent significant structural changes. Findings show that professionals were forced to change articulation work strategies in response to new organisational structures. This included changes in the way professionals monitored, assessed, coordinated and collaborated around patient care. Furthermore, these shifts in articulation work held important implications for both workplace and professional autonomy, as professionals responded to changes in their work conditions.

This study aims to examine the role of location autonomy (i.e. autonomy over where to work) in shaping employee mental distress during their working days.

A total of 316 employees from 6 organizations in the UK provided data for 4,082 half-day sessions, over 10 working days. Random intercept modeling is used to analyze half-day data nested within individuals.

Results show that location autonomy, beyond decision-making autonomy and work-method autonomy, is positively associated with the perception of task-environment (TE) fit which, in turn, contributes to lower mental distress during each half-day session. Results of supplementary analysis also show that location autonomy can contribute to higher absorption, task proficiency and job satisfaction via TE fit during each half-day session.

This study reveals the importance and uniqueness of location autonomy in shaping employees' outcomes, offering implications for how organizations can use this in the work–life flexibility policies to support employee mental health.