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Michel (2012; 2014) and Lupu and Empson (2015) have recently highlighted how very qualified knowledge workers with apparent high levels of autonomy work beyond their limits, burning out and severely harming their health and personal relationships. When questioned, these workers frequently refer to their activities and efforts as self-chosen7, an emerging contradiction that is beginning to be known as the ‘autonomy paradox’ (Lupu & Empson, 2015; Mazmanian, Orlikowski & Yates, 2013).
— Knowledge Work Intensification And Self-Management: The Autonomy Paradox
paradoxical trend that high-level knowledge workers with apparent high levels of autonomy seem to end up not using their supposed autonomy, reviewing previous explanations that use terms such as ‘self-entrapment’ (Michel, 2014), ‘illusio’ (Lupu & Empson, 2015) and ‘win-win fantasies’ (Ekman, 2015) to describe the features that drive the overworking and intensification trends that endanger health and personal relations.
— Knowledge Work Intensification And Self-Management: The Autonomy Paradox
Autonomy (and/or its perception) seems to be an increasingly relevant double-edge sword: it might act as a resource to protect/promote health but it also seems involved in the internalization of job demands that might end up in workaholism and overwork.
—Oscar Perez Zapata “Overwork, boundaryless work and the autonomy paradox”