THE YESTERDAY , TODAY AND TOMORROW OF EMPLOYEE AUTONOMY: A BIBLIOMETRIC REVIEW AND RESEARCH AGENDA Ljupcho E ft imov Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Faculty of Economics – Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia ljupco.e ft imov@eccf.ukim.edu.mk Violeta Cvetkoska Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Faculty of Economics – Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia vcvetkoska@eccf.ukim.edu.mk Bojan Kitanovikj Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Faculty of Economics – Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia bojan.kitanovikj@eccf.ukim.edu.mk Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 53 Employee autonomy, which concerns the em ‐ powerment of employees and redefines the role of employees in how organiza ti ons work has been ex ‐ tensively researched in the last decades, mostly in fields such as organiza ti onal psychology, organiza ‐ ti onal behavior, strategic management, and most dominantly in human resource management (HRM). Both human resource (HR) prac titi oners and schol ‐ 1 INTRODUCTION Defini ti ons describe employee autonomy or job autonomy as the degree to which the job en ‐ ables a significant por ti on of freedom, discre ti on, and independence in employees to determine how, when, and where they perform their work (Kubicek et al., 2017). Following the phenomena of the Great Resigna ti on, quiet qui tti ng, and ubiquitous remote work in post ‐COVID human resource management, researchers’ interest in job autonomy has grown to an all ‐ti me high. Besides the growing sci ‐ en ti fic maturity of the field, the extent to which employees should enjoy autonomy in cra ft ing their workload, choosing their work methods and workplace, and the impact on the work outcomes is not synthesized and open to debates. We address the evolu ti onary development track of this concept using a mul ti technique bibliometric analysis of em ‐ ployee autonomy and the invisible colleges framework. Moreover, the research presents a combina ti on of descrip ti ve bibliometric analysis, co ‐authorship, and keyword co ‐occurrence analysis, to inves ti gate the state ‐of ‐the ‐art research and past scholar direc ti ons about job autonomy. Thus, we contribute to academic research by revealing job autonomy’s inherent intellectual structure, inves ti ga ti ng the most influen ti al concepts and hotspots, and portraying new paths for future research. Namely, the analysis pointed out core themes including benefits of employee autonomy, job sa ti s ‐ fac ti on and well ‐being, environmental context, mo ti vati on, employee behavior, organiza ti onal psychology, work or ‐ ganiza ti on, leadership, digitaliza ti on, and performance, and five paths for future studies. This leaves space for the topic to be further cross ‐pollinated with other managerial concepts. The findings have the poten ti al to benefit policy ‐ makers, prac titi oners, and the academic community as crucial stakeholders in the field. Keywords: employee autonomy, job autonomy, bibliometric review, co ‐cita ti on analysis, keyword co ‐occurrence analysis Abstract Vol. 13, No. 1, 53 ‐70 doi:10.17708/DRMJ.2024.v13n01a04 DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 53 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 54 Ljupcho E ft imov, Violeta Cvetkoska, Bojan Kitanovikj: The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Employee Autonomy: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda ars have emphasized employee autonomy as a con ‐ tribu ti ng factor to individual, team, and organiza ‐ ti onal performance. In this sense, many scholars view job autonomy as a core element of the job de ‐ sign func ti on in HRM, which is tasked with establish ‐ ing employees’ du ti es, roles, and responsibili ti es (Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991). As one of the most prevalent models in job design, the job characteris ‐ ti cs model centers employee autonomy as one of the fundamental dimensions together will skill vari ‐ ety, task iden ti ty and significance, and feedback that lead to increased mo ti va ti on and sa ti sfac ti on (Ali et al., 2014). To date, published research has focused mainly on determining various rela ti onships between em ‐ ployee autonomy and employees’ cogni ti ve abili ti es and job ‐related skills (Morgeson et al., 2005), com ‐ munica ti on quality and managerial support (Parker et al., 2001), intrinsic mo ti va ti on (Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2011), perceived control, family support, self ‐e ffi ‐ cacy, and similar (Federici, 2013), and assessing its influences on employee wellbeing, work ‐life balance, job performance, and work outcomes (Clausen et al., 2022; De Clercq & Brieger, 2021; Cho et al., 2021). Addi ti onally, several meta ‐literature reviews exist on the topic, yet are predominantly par ti al and focused on specific rela ti onships between constructs (Khosh ‐ naw & Alavi, 2020) or are in turn industry ‐specific (Pursio et al., 2021). This is why we believe that an overarching aerial view of this concept is needed using biblio ‐ metric analysis, which has recently gained popular ‐ ity among researchers as a method for achieving objec ti vity and comprehensiveness in reviewing ef ‐ forts (Donthu et al., 2021). Bibliometric methods have the poten ti al to shed light on ar ti cles’ impor ‐ tance and connec ti ons to other ar ti cles in the field, presen ti ng these links in a network by clusters. In turn, these connec ti ons can remain hidden with sys ‐ tema ti c literature reviews or meta ‐reviews. Further, in the case of bibliometric analyses, researcher bias is rarely present, and the sample size is much larger as it o ft en comprises several hundred ar ti cles (Zupic & Cater, 2013). Despite all these benefits, very few bibliometric reviews on employees’ and job auton ‐ omy have been published so far (Zychová et al., 2023), which represented addi ti onal mo ti va ti on for us to carry out this research. We conducted a quan ti ta ti ve systema ti c review grounded in bibliometrics and compliant with the PRISMA protocol for acquiring data (Moher et al., 2015). The analyzed period covers all published ar ‐ ti cles in double ‐blind peer ‐reviewed journals un ti l the end of 2023. To contribute to a wider perspec ‐ ti ve and to ensure an increased level of objec ti vity, we perform a mul ti technique bibliometric analysis containing a descrip ti ve bibliometric analysis, co ‐au ‐ thorship analysis, and keyword co ‐occurrence anal ‐ ysis (Porter et al., 2002). Through using advanced bibliometric techniques, this study a tt empts to com ‐ plement prior literature and trace the historical evo ‐ lu ti on of employee autonomy research, uncover present influen ti al and popular themes and hotspots, and eventually point out direc ti ons for fu ‐ ture research in the field. With that in mind, we look to answer the following research ques ti ons: RQ1: What is the inherent intellectual structure of the employee autonomy body of research? RQ2: What are the most influen ti al and impac tf ul concepts, themes, and hotspots nowadays? RQ3: What is the poten ti al of employee autonomy research and what new paths for future re ‐ search on the topic exist? With this, the ar ti cle’s a tt empted contribu ti ons are twofold. T o begin with, this bibliometric review un ‐ derscores the most impac tf ul ar ti cles, and the themes they inves ti gate, and pinpoints the current trends of the research trends, which serve as a basis for new in ‐ ves ti ga ti ons in future research endeavors. Then, the second contribu ti on can be seen in the a tt empt to el ‐ evate the exis ti ng employee autonomy literature through a more comprehensive and objec ti ve point of view in terms of the review. This holds poten ti al theo ‐ re ti cal contribu ti ons as the dominant job autonomy research is synthesized around the backbone of the bibliometric method comprised of three bibliometric techniques, while also benefi tti ng a range of di fferent stakeholders such as business leaders, managers, HR professionals, who can prac ti cally act on the findings in their everyday work towards improving their orga ‐ niza ti ons. Addi ti onally, policymakers can find the con ‐ tribu ti ons useful when regula ti ng unioniza ti on and forms of increased employee par ti cipa ti on. DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 54 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 55 To address the above ‐men ti oned research ques ti ons, we first provide a theore ti cal perspec ti ve of employee autonomy, followed by an in ‐depth de ‐ scrip ti on of the process of selec ti ng and analyzing data for the three bibliometric techniques. Then, the study will outline the summary of the results in a review grounded in the invisible colleges frame ‐ work and lastly recommend future research direc ‐ ti ons in the field in ques ti on, as well as underline poten ti al limita ti ons of the bibliometric method. 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND As stated, for this ar ti cle, we understand em ‐ ployee autonomy in the broadest sense as the level of freedom and discre ti on employees have in terms of their workplace autonomy, work ti me autonomy, and methods autonomy (Kubicek et al., 2017). Other defini ti ons broaden the power delegated to employees with this concept, so they understand it to mean a set of prac ti ces that involve the delega ‐ ti on of responsibility in the hierarchy to give the workforce enhanced authority and decision ‐making (Lin et al., 2013). Besides the work ‐related aspects, some researchers believe that employee autonomy also translates to allowing workers to regulate and show their feelings, emo ti ons, and behaviors to pur ‐ sue the fulfillment of the objec ti ves, which are grounded in their personal values and belief systems (Wu et al., 2015). Moreover, the dimensions of job autonomy have significantly varied over ti me as more re ‐ searchers added new constructs to this umbrella concept. One of the first conceptualiza ti ons of em ‐ ployee autonomy stress job schedule or the auton ‐ omy to schedule the work on one’s own and job procedures or the autonomy to opt for the ap ‐ proach one believes is the most adequate one for performing a certain task (De Spiegelaere et al., 2016). Then, other dimensions were considered such as autonomy in choosing the job criteria, goals, pace of work, the workplace, workload, and working hours – the la tt er gaining new ground with the ubiq ‐ uitous character of remote work and hybrid work prac ti ces (Muecke & Iseke, 2019; Sewell & Taskin, 2015). Some later addi ti ons to the dimensions of job autonomy include decision ‐making and self ‐reflec ‐ ti on (Theurer et al., 2018). A concept that is commonly mistaken for job autonomy is independence in the workplace. While they have similari ti es, the concepts di ffer widely one from the other. According to the self ‐determi ‐ na ti on theory, job autonomy can be characterized by having free will at work and standing behind the ac ti ons and values one believes in (Deci et al., 2017). On the other hand, independence means that one does not need nor accept any help or resources to perform the task, so one does not require others to perform the tasks and can func ti on on one’s own (Tsen et al., 2021). In other words, job autonomy does not neces ‐ sarily require an employee to be independent – in fact, an employee can be autonomous while depend ‐ ing on co ‐workers and managers for support and help with the workload. With that in mind, the posi ti ve ef ‐ fects of increased autonomy in the workplace are o ft en associated with work outcomes like increased employee sa ti sfac ti on, mo ti va ti on, engagement, commitment, and self ‐e fficacy, while mi ti ga ti ng work ‐ related stress and nurturing trustworthy rela ti onships with the top managers (Clausen et al., 2022; Cho et al., 2021; Morgeson et al., 2005). Yet, a body of empirical work indicates that nega ti ve e ffects are more likely to be seen on em ‐ ployees’ well ‐being when employees have the power to decide when and where they perform their work tasks and du ti es, leading to possible de ‐ via ti ons from the organiza ti onal objec ti ves (Kubicek et al., 2017). These nega ti ve e ffects can be at ‐ tributed to the di fferences in the characteris ti cs of each employee as well as the various groups of job features (Lu et al., 2017). The way job autonomy is perceived is also di fferent among cultures; while some fully embrace it, others shun it, preferring to widen the gap between management and employ ‐ ees. These di fferences further fuel the debate and the scien ti fic discourse surrounding this concept. 3 METHODS AND DATA The objec ti ve of bibliometric methods as re ‐ search instruments is the evalua ti on and analysis of scien ti fic literature to uncover the structure and dy ‐ namics of a scien ti fic field with classifica ti on and visu ‐ aliza ti on (Zupic & Cater, 2013). This is why these DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 55 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 56 Ljupcho E ft imov, Violeta Cvetkoska, Bojan Kitanovikj: The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Employee Autonomy: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda techniques are o ft en equated with science mapping, as they tend to shed light on rela ti onships between publica ti ons. Despite being a well ‐established method (Kessler, 1963), bibliometric analysis has recently gained the researchers’ interest partly because of the accessible online databases for retrieving data and then because of the objec ti ve, aerial, synthesized view on a par ti cular subject ma tt er, which is useful for other scholars and future research endeavors. En ‐ hanced bibliometric so ft ware like VOSviewer, R, Bibex ‐ cel, and similar played a big role in the prolifera ti on of bibliometric studies. To fulfill our research objec ti ves, we conduct descrip ti ve bibliometric analysis, co ‐authorship analysis, and keyword co ‐occurrence bibliometric analysis. The co ‐cita ti on technique is based on the frequency at which ar ti cles, authors, or journals are cited together, meaning that if a pair of co ‐cited ar ‐ ti cles frequently appears in a body of work, their connec ti on or link strength is stronger and the con ‐ cepts they elaborate are more closely ti ed together . The descrip ti ve and co ‐authorship analyses were some of the first bibliometric techniques fol ‐ lowed by keyword co ‐occurrence analysis, which was introduced later in the bibliometric development journey. It focuses on the content of the ar ti cle, and establishing rela ti onships based on keywords from ar ti cle ti tles and abstracts (Zupic & Cater, 2013). A rule of thumb of this technique is that the connec ‐ ti on between two keywords and concepts is as strong as the number of ar ti cles in which two impor ‐ tant words appear . As a result, the network map gen ‐ erated as an output of this analysis places the keywords closer to each other if they are more con ‐ nected and appear more frequently (Wallin, 2005). With this study, we also wanted to analyze the field’s development across ti me. We interpret these evolu ti onary rather than revolu ti onary changes in the field by incorpora ti ng them into the conceptual framework of invisible colleges, which is typically u ti lized for inves ti ga ti ng scien ti fic communica ti on to expose the dynamic transforma ti ons across the an ‐ alyzed period (Vogel, 2012). The framework pro ‐ poses several pa tt erns evident in the evolu ti onary development of invisible colleges from the emer ‐ gence of a new college without its predecessors un ti l two or more colleges combine and merge into a scien ti fic thought: college appearance, transfor ‐ ma ti on, dri ft , di fferen ti a ti on, fusion, implosion, and revival (Vogel, 2012). In terms of the data, a search query was per ‐ formed in the Scopus database, one of the leading databases that index global, high ‐quality research on 17 December 2023. The subject area was limited to business, management, and accoun ti ng, and only peer ‐reviewed ar ti cles in scien ti fic journals were in ‐ cluded in the query. Moreover, we used the following search syntax: (“EMPLOYEE*” AND “AUTONOM*”), (“JOB” AND “AUTONOM*”), and (“WORK*” AND “AU ‐ TONOM*”). The search generated a total of 1565 ar ‐ ti cles. The inclusion criteria to determine the final dataset for this study included original scien ti fic ar ‐ ti cles that analyze an aspect of employee autonomy, writt en in the English language, and indexed in the Scopus database. On the other hand, commen ‐ taries, country reports, governmental reports, ab ‐ stracts, editorials, posters, research protocols, white papers, so ‐called gray literature, and thesis disser ‐ ta ti ons were excluded from considera ti on. To clean the data and get to the dataset of in ‐ cluded ar ti cles, we followed the PRISMA protocol (Moher et al., 2015). The steps and a detailed de ‐ scrip ti on of the performed ac ti on per this protocol are given in Figure 1. The data sample eventually consisted of 1041 ar ti cles. 4 RESULTS AND FINDINGS 4.1 Descrip ti ve Analysis A total of 1041 arti cles on employee autonomy were published from 1957 onwards: that year mark ‐ ing the publica ti on of the first ar ti cle men ti oning job autonomy in the context of determining job sa ti s ‐ fac ti on and employee turnover (Ross & Zander, 1957). The last five years have been instrumental in employee autonomy research as is evident in Fig ‐ ures 2 and 3, which display the ti meline of published ar ti cles per year. In the early years, employee autonomy was viewed as just an integral part of job characteris ti cs and demands, which is why it was researched paired with the rest of the constructs of models like the job DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 56 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 57 Figure 1: Visual presenta ti on of the applied PRISMA protocol Figure 2: Annual trend of published ar ti cles on employee autonomy Source: Authors’ analysis Source: Authors’ analysis Figure 3: Five ‐year trend of published ar ti cles on employee autonomy Source: Authors’ analysis DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 57 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 58 demands ‐resources model (Taipale et al., 2011). It was not un ti l the 2010s that scholars started mas ‐ sively singling out employee autonomy as a sepa ‐ rate concept worth analyzing. Furthermore, from the large research body, some founda ti onal ar ti cles stand out; the most ‐cited ones are presented in Table 1. The interest in this field is evident in the fact that since 2010, more than 900 ar ti cles have been writt en about the level of autonomy of employees and its impact on other organiza ti onal phenomena, which is nine ti mes more than in all years before 2010 combined. Journals which have published the most employee autonomy ‐related ar ti cles are Inter ‐ na ti onal Journal of Human Resource Management (36), European Journal of Work and Organiza ti onal Psychology (26), Personnel Review (21), Journal of Managerial Psychology (20), Employee Rela ti ons (18), Human Rela ti ons (18), and Journal of Voca ‐ ti onal Behavior (17), signaling the main research areas featuring job autonomy literature to be human resource management, organiza ti onal psy ‐ chology, leadership, and organiza ti onal behavior. The most ‐cited authors who have achieved that with the fewest published ar ti cles are presented in Table 2. They reflect the diverse landscape of em ‐ ployee autonomy research, confirming the various research contexts where this field has developed. 4.2 Co ‐authorship Bibliometric Analysis Connected with authorship, the following bib ‐ liometric technique analyzes co ‐authorship among authors and country ‐wise. To achieve this, all ar ti ‐ cles from the iden ti fied data sample were imported into the so ft ware VOSviewer, one of the leading pro ‐ Ljupcho E ft imov, Violeta Cvetkoska, Bojan Kitanovikj: The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Employee Autonomy: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda Table 1: Most ‐cited ar ti cles on employee autonomy Source: Authors’ analysis Title Author(s) Source Total Cita ti ons Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: Managing culture in modern organiza ti ons Willmo tt (1993) Journal of Management Studies 974 Work engagement and financial returns: A diary study on the role of job and personal resources Xanthopoulou et al. (2009) Journal of Occupa ti onal and Organiza ti onal Psychology 797 Determinants of individual engagement in knowledge sharing Cabrera et al. (2006) Interna ti onal Journal of Human Resource Management 748 Weekly work engagement and performance: A study among star ti ng teachers Bakker & Bal (2010) Journal of Occupa ti onal and Organiza ti onal Psychology 723 On the rela ti ons among work value orienta ti ons, psychological need sa ti sfac ti on and job outcomes: A self ‐determina ti on theory approach Vansteenkiste et al. (2007) Journal of Occupa ti onal and Organiza ti onal Psychology 440 Job cra ft ing and its rela ti onships with person ‐job fit and meaningfulness: A three ‐wave study Tims et al. (2016) Journal of Voca ti onal Behavior 374 Exploring nonlinearity in employee voice: The e ffects of personal control and organiza ti onal iden ti fica ti on Tangirala & Ramanujam (2008) Academy of Management Journal 335 The employee ‐organiza ti on rela ti onship, organiza ti onal ci ti zenship behaviors, and superior service quality Bell & Menguc (2002) Journal of Retailing 315 The experience of powerlessness in organiza ti ons Ashforth (1989) Organiza ti onal Behavior and Human Decision Processes 307 Conflict management, e fficacy, and performance in organiza ti onal teams Alper et al. (2000) Personnel Psychology 302 DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 58 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 59 grams for mul ti technique bibliometric analysis (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010). There are several mini clus ‐ ters and connec ti ons between the authors out of which most notable for the bibliometric analysis are the green, blue, and red clusters shown in Figure 4 due to their size and biggest link strengths. The green cluster is represented by the inclu ‐ sion of employee autonomy measurement as part of the job demands ‐resources (JD ‐R) theory. These co ‐authorship collabora ti ons have found that the feeling of increased employee autonomy can com ‐ bat burnout (Bakker et al., 2014), boost employee engagement levels (Demerou ti et al., 2010), em ‐ power employees to par ti cipate in cra ft ing their jobs (Demerou ti et al., 2015). In recent years, the rela ‐ ti onship between job demands and resources, which includes employee autonomy, has gained new popularity when researched in the context of organiza ti onal and environmental crises. The blue cluster sees autonomy as an integral part of employ ‐ ees’ basic needs sa ti sfac ti on (Van den Broeck et al., 2010). Addi ti onally, the scholars analyzing this con ‐ cept connected employee autonomy with the ful ‐ fillment of needs and the e ffect on autonomous mo ti va ti on, meaning that employees who feel they have higher levels of freedom and discre ti on in their work will have fulfilled such psychological needs, thus making them more self ‐mo ti vated in their per ‐ formance (De Cooman et al., 2013). Findings in this cluster also suggest that senior employees value higher job autonomy and, in such cases, may be more willing to work un ti l re ti rement age (Vanbelle et al., 2017). Rea ffirming these findings, authors in the red cluster also find that higher levels of auton ‐ omy are associated with enhanced autonomous mo ti va ti on (Sandrin et al., 2022), which can result in improved performance and commitment to the organiza ti on on one hand, and lower turnover rates on the other (Fernet et al., 2021). Country co ‐authorship is another important bibliometric technique for determining the research contexts of exis ti ng employee autonomy research. For the analysis, the country co ‐authorship mini ‐ mum threshold was set to two ar ti cles, so that more countries can be represented. This translated into a map of 64 countries, which are categorized into 11 clusters, each represented with a separate color (Figure 5). Most authors tend to collaborate with their peers from the cluster itself. Addi ti onally, the major ‐ ity of countries in a single cluster have other contex ‐ tual, historical, cultural, or geographical connec ti ons. Illustra ti vely, the green cluster is composed mainly of European countries or countries that speak similar languages. This includes the Netherlands, Spain, Por ‐ tugal, Brazil, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, and more. While some authors like ones from the United States and the United Kingdom o ft en pair up with counterparts from their cluster, they are an example Table 2: Most ‐cited authors on employee autonomy Source: Authors’ analysis Author Total cita ti ons Number of published ar ti cles Bakker A.B. 2334 11 Demerou ti E. 1332 9 Schaufeli W.B. 1072 7 Willmo tt H. 1043 2 Xanthopoulou D. 961 4 Bal P .M. 882 2 De Wi tt e H. 815 7 Cabrera Á. 748 1 Collins W.C. 748 1 Salgado J.F. 748 1 DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 59 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 60 of cross ‐regional collabora ti on as can be demon ‐ strated through the strong link connec ti on between these two countries and China. Chinese authors also contribute to employee autonomy literature with Pakistani, Taiwanese, and Sri Lankan authors, to name a few, too. Tables 3 and 4 present a ranking of countries where employee autonomy researchers come from in terms of the total number of cita ti ons and the number of published ar ti cles in the field. When it comes to the former, the most produc ti ve were Eu ‐ ropean authors, whose countries make up half of the Ljupcho E ft imov, Violeta Cvetkoska, Bojan Kitanovikj: The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Employee Autonomy: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda Figure 4: Co ‐authorship network visualiza ti on map Figure 5: Country co ‐authorship map Source: Authors’ analysis Source: Authors’ analysis DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 60 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 61 top 10 countries in this aspect with countries from the Americas and Asia, following closely behind. The situa ti on is changed when the total cita ‐ ti ons are accounted for. While the first four coun ‐ tries are s ti ll present, their posi ti ons have slightly changed. It can be concluded that the United States authors have both the most published ar ti cles and the most cita ti ons. Interes ti ngly, Belgium and Spain were not among the 10 most produc ti ve countries, but in turn, entered the 10 most ‐cited countries. 4.3 Keyword Co ‐occurrence Bibliometric Analysis This bibliometric technique aims to iden ti fy key themes and topics in employee autonomy research. Each cluster of keywords in the bibliographic map corresponds with the subfields of the bigger em ‐ ployee autonomy field (Van Raan, 2014). Moreover, for this analysis, the same dataset consis ti ng of 1041 ar ti cles was used. Due to the size, the number of keywords for the seman ti c map had to be minimized by determining the most adequate threshold. This Figure 3: Structural model of CXM framework for loyalty Table 4: Country co ‐authorship by number of total cita ti ons Source: Authors’ analysis Source: Authors’ analysis # Country Number of Published Ar ti cles 1 United States 208 2 United Kingdom 113 3 The Netherlands 99 4 Australia 88 5 China 80 6 Germany 72 7 Canada 59 8 India 59 9 France 40 10 Norway 40 # Country Number of Total Cita ti ons 1 United States 8671 2 The Netherlands 5871 3 United Kingdom 4344 4 Australia 3693 5 Canada 3137 6 China 2079 7 Germany 1647 8 Belgium 1593 9 Spain 1379 10 Norway 1145 DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 61 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 62 was done through trial and error and eventually, the minimum number was set to two ar ti cles men ti on ‐ ing a certain keyword to gain a more aerial perspec ‐ ti ve of the employee autonomy field. A ft er the abstract and keyword mining and man ‐ ually selec ti ng the relevant keywords, 654 keywords were included in the network visualiza ti on map (Fig ‐ ure 6). These keywords are connected with 6067 links and their total link strength is 1674.49. In this sense, the five keywords with the highest occurrences across the research landscape include ‘autonomy’ (links: 329, total link strength: 185, occurrences: 191), ‘job auton ‐ omy’ (links: 234, total link strength: 120, occurrences: 126), ‘job sa ti sfac ti on’ (links: 212, total link strength: 92, occurrences: 96), ‘self ‐determina ti on’ (links: 138, total link strength: 66, occurrences: 67), ‘mo ti vati on’ (links: 151, total link strength: 46, occurrences 46). The keywords were separated into 10 intercon ‐ nected clusters: 1) red cluster: Benefits of employee autonomy, 2) green cluster: Job sa ti sfac ti on and wellbeing, 3) dark blue cluster: Environmental con ‐ text, 4) yellow cluster: Moti va ti on, 5) purple cluster: Employee behavior, 6) light blue cluster: Organiza ‐ ti onal psychology, 7) orange cluster: Work organiza ‐ ti on, 8) brown cluster: Leadership, 9) pink cluster: Digitaliza ti on, and 10) magenta cluster: Perfor ‐ mance. In the next paragraphs, we examine the clusters with the highest keyword occurrences in further detail. Red cluster: Benefits of employee autonomy The red cluster is the largest one, encompass ‐ ing 173 dis ti nct keywords, which are related to the various rela ti onships that employee autonomy has with other constructs. The most frequent keywords are ‘autonomy’ , ‘leadership’ , ‘human resource man ‐ agement’ , ‘innova ti on’ , and ‘personnel’ , which are in turn connected with other items like ‘knowledge management’, ‘empowerment’, ‘employee engage ‐ ment’, ‘control’, ‘entrepreneurship’, and similar. De ‐ Ljupcho E ft imov, Violeta Cvetkoska, Bojan Kitanovikj: The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Employee Autonomy: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda Figure 6: Network visualiza ti on of keyword co ‐occurrence analysis Source: Authors’ analysis DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 62 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 63 spite the nega ti ve aspects of this concept, exis ti ng research mainly focuses on the posi ti ves. When em ‐ ployees feel they are more autonomous, this can highly likely translate into a higher absorp ti ve capac ‐ ity, need sa ti sfac ti on, commitment, willingness for con ti nuous improvement, crea ti vity, and innova ti ve work behavior (Chung ‐Yan, 2010; Langfred & Moye, 2004; Cho et al., 2021). Ul ti mately, this makes the en ti re employee experience at work be tt er, which is one of the primary domains of HRM. The research in the cluster has mostly been done in the Asian context and industries such as banking and health ‐ care and family businesses and startups. Recently, research on work ‐from‐home prac ti ces demon‐ strated the e ffects of perceived autonomy in this context, too (Galan ti et al., 2021). Green cluster: Job sa ti sfac ti on and wellbeing The second largest cluster consists of 147 key ‐ words, which are mostly connected with this cluster’s highest ‐occurring keywords ‘job sa ti sfac ti on’ and ‘wellbeing’ . Other notable keywords include ‘job cra ft ‐ ing’, ‘work ‐life balance’, ‘working condi ti ons’, ‘work ‐ place’ , ‘burnout’ , ‘emo ti onal exhaus ti on’ , ‘personality’ , and more. Scholars point out that lower levels of au ‐ tonomy may result in higher absenteeism and this or ‐ ganiza ti onal phenomenon may mi ti gate the e ffects of burnout, customer aggression, emo ti onal exhaus ti on, and dissonance, especially in knowledge ‐intensive or ‐ ganiza ti ons (Kim et al., 2019). The level of hierarchy and management support can play a role in this as ‐ pect when cra ft ing the job characteris ti cs together with the HR team and the employees. The research context is a diverse one, including countries from Eurasia, Canada, South Africa, and more, with meth ‐ ods like thema ti c analysis, regression analysis, and qualita ti ve research predominantly used. Dark blue cluster: Environmental context Keywords like ‘self ‐determina ti on’, ‘covid ‐19’, ‘organiza ti onal commitment’ , and ‘job design’ dom ‐ inate this cluster and are linked with similar ones re ‐ la ti ng to the context of the surrounding one finds themselves in such as ‘co ‐workers support’, ‘crisis’, ‘employee development’, ‘flexible working’, ‘hybrid work’ , ‘jus ti ce’ , and others. The total number of key ‐ words in this cluster is 83. Further, research endeav ‐ ors signal that the level of autonomy workers enjoy may vary in di fferent cri ti cal situa ti ons and this feel ‐ ing can be a potent media ti ng factor when the or ‐ ganiza ti on is facing a crisis (Frare & Beuren, 2021). While employees are more autonomous when working remotely, this can impact their feelings of loneliness on one hand or make them more e fficient in some cases due to their self ‐e fficacy and self ‐de ‐ termina ti on (Mohammed et al., 2022). Yellow cluster: Mo ti va ti on This cluster considers the e ffect of employee au ‐ tonomy on the mo ti va ti on or engagement to per ‐ form the required tasks. Of the 67 dis ti nct keywords, the ones that occur the most are ‘work engagement’ and ‘mo ti va ti on’ , which further link with ‘job charac ‐ teris ti cs’, ‘organiza ti onal ci ti zenship’, ‘self ‐employ ‐ ment’, and other keywords. As workplaces become more diverse genera ti on ‐wise, mul ti ple studies con ‐ firm that workers from Genera ti on Y value their au ‐ tonomy as a mo ti va ti onal factor and see it as a core value for making sure the employee’s voice is heard (Rice et al., 2022). Autonomy has been found to be crucial for female employees as another category, especially if they choose to start a family (Halldén et al., 2012). The sense of increased freedom about how, where, and when the job is done is also one of the reasons why entrepreneurs tend to launch their businesses instead of op ti ng to work for someone else (Van Gelderen & Jansen, 2006). European coun ‐ tries like Greece, Norway, and Finland appear as the backdrop of these findings while studies in the public sector and the hospitality sector dominate. Purple cluster: Employee behavior Consis ti ng of 60 keywords, this cluster rea ffirms that employee autonomy can impact how employ ‐ ees act not simply how they feel. The main item in the cluster is ‘job autonomy’ with ‘job performance’ trailing behind, connec ti ng with keywords such as ‘employee rela ti ons’, ‘employee reten ti on’, ‘em ‐ ployee turnover’ , ‘innova ti ve work behavior’ , ‘proac ‐ ti vity, ‘par ti cipa ti ve decision ‐making’, and more. While employee autonomy can a ffect whether the worker perceives the work as meaningful or not, it can also help them decide if they want to stay or leave the organiza ti on (Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2013). Task and structural autonomy are highlighted as auton ‐ omy types that can par ti cularly leverage employee DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 63 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 64 Ljupcho E ft imov, Violeta Cvetkoska, Bojan Kitanovikj: The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Employee Autonomy: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda behavior in a way that drives job performance fur ‐ ther and s ti mulates innova ti on as a key compe titi ve ‐ ness factor (Pa tt naik & Sahoo, 2021). 5 REVIEW OF THE EVOLUTION OF EMPLOYEE AUTONOMY AND DISCUSSION As described in the sec ti on dedicated to the used methodology, besides the bibliometric analy ‐ sis, we interpret the field’s development across four phases from its origins in the 1950s un ti l now through the framework of invisible colleges (Vogel, 2012), including college transforma ti on, dri ft , di ffer ‐ en ti a ti on, and fusion. This framework has also been used by other researchers to track the evolu ti onary pa tt erns and paths of di fferent organiza ti onal phe ‐ nomena like work mindfulness (Bunjak et al., 2022). The findings from the clusters of the bibliometric techniques are synthesized in the framework. The framework, presented in Figure 7, indicates that employee autonomy research has first been de ‐ fined, assessed, and measured using di fferent scales and methods. With that in mind, employee auton ‐ omy as a concept has been included in the job en ‐ gagement scale and performance ques ti onnaire, training, informa ti on, par ti cipa ti on, and autonomy (TIPA) scale, the measure of disorganiza ti on, the basic psychological needs at work scale (BPNWS), the job quality scale, and the work autonomy scales. Then, it was paired up with other organiza ti onal phenomena in theore ti cal models which in their in ‐ cep ti on were used for evalua ti ng their impact on job sa ti sfac ti on, well ‐being, behavior, and similar. A ft er developing several autonomy types, researchers an ‐ alyzed the impact of leadership and other facilitat ‐ ing condi ti ons on this construct. In its final stages of development so far, new technologies such as ar ti ‐ ficial intelligence, digitaliza ti on, flexible working ar ‐ rangements, and individual and team job cra ft ing have reinvigorated job autonomy as an organiza ‐ ti onal segment. Now, it is o ft en fused with other employee ‐centered aspects like empowerment and parti cipa ti ve decision ‐making. Figure 7: Evolu ti onary development pa tt erns of employee autonomy research grounded in the invisible colleges framework Source: Authors’ analysis DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 64 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 65 It is worth no ti ng that it didn’t take for a phase to end so that another could start, instead, they over ‐ lapped and even in recent years, scholars have found di fferent ways for comprehensively measuring the impact of employee autonomy on as many spheres of the professional and personal lives of workers. The founda ti on of most employee autonomy research is a solid theore ti cal framework and a the ‐ ore ti cal background that has incorporated this con ‐ cept when analyzing organiza ti onal phenomena. Subsequently, Figure 8 presents a word cloud of the theories that have a tt empted to incorporate, define, or explain employee autonomy across the historic development of the concept. Looking at the roots of HRM historically, one of the reasons for establishing the HR profession was to enable employee autonomy (Hansen et al., 1994) as a healthy concept that views each employee as his/her whole self, who should be free to some extent make work ‐related decisions that a ffect them. This relates to the early e fforts of increasing employee parti cipa ti on and the growing need for unioniza ti on across di fferent industries (Chang et al., 2017). Job autonomy is especially analyzed between employees and entrepreneurs with the former stat ‐ ing that this can be a reason for star ti ng a new busi ‐ ness (De Clercq & Brieger, 2021). Furthermore, managerial and employee autonomy is perceived as a significant career development step (Lartey, 2021), which means that workers can self ‐direct their ca ‐ reers and learn at their own pace. Employee autonomy research has been a ffili ‐ ated with the di fferent types of leadership, too. O ft en, cultures that promote ethical, transforma ‐ ti ve, and Laissez ‐faire leadership styles tend to value a higher degree of job autonomy for the workforce (Gao & Jiang, 2019). Not only leadership types, but several management styles like lean management, agile, and amoeba management also tend to favor the wide expansion of this concept (Butollo et al., 2019). Addi ti onally, since employees don’t neces ‐ sarily depend on each other, autonomous jobs in ‐ voke the discussion of work aliena ti on as well as organiza ti onal knowledge sharing and hiding (Peng et al., 2022). As a result, if there is a lack of commu ‐ nica ti on, too autonomous employees may choose to withhold informa ti on from their co ‐workers. Recent research has put the focus on using em ‐ ployee autonomy to build a resilient workforce that finds meaningfulness in the work, while improving their psychological wellbeing (Martela et al., 2021). Even though employees are freer to make decisions about their work, when they feel autonomous, they are more likely to display posi ti ve organiza ti onal ci ti ‐ zenship and innova ti ve work behavior (De Spiege ‐ laere et al., 2016). Yet, researchers have pointed out the autonomy paradox, meaning that too much of a good thing, or in our case, employee autonomy can lead to destruc ti ve e ffects on the organiza ti onal core and fabric (Fürstenberg et al., 2021). 6 PATHS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH A significant part of bibliometric analysis is to iden ti fy the latest trends and poten ti al future re ‐ search pathways in the field. Our quan ti ta ti ve ap ‐ proach takes a look at the latest themes in employee autonomy research presented historically in the overlay visualiza ti on map in Figure 9. The circles in Source: Authors’ analysis Figure 8: Word cloud of employee autonomy theories DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 65 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 66 Ljupcho E ft imov, Violeta Cvetkoska, Bojan Kitanovikj: The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Employee Autonomy: A Bibliometric Review and Research Agenda the map are colored in yellow and darker colors, meaning that the brighter the circle is, the more re ‐ cently this theme has been researched. There is s ti ll room for studies of employee au ‐ tonomy in di fferent research contexts in terms of geographically less ‐represented regions like the Balkan region, La ti n America, South ‐East Europe, Central Africa, and more, as well as sectors including non ‐profit, manufacturing, social, and green econ ‐ omy, and similar. Contemporary technologies such as ar ti ficial in ‐ telligence and its a ffiliated methods are predicted to con ti nue widening the impact on employee au ‐ tonomy. In this sense, there is a gap in the literature about how genera ti ve ar ti ficial intelligence can help with individual job cra ft ing and the impact of human ‐ar ti ficial intelligence collabora ti on (Calvo et al., 2020). Other types of technologies making the head ‐ lines include wearable technology and employee behavior tracking, which significantly impacts work ‐ ers’ autonomy (Van Acker et al., 2021). Scholars can explore this rela ti onship and if or to what extent should these technologies be present in the work ‐ place for monitoring employee behavior. While worker co ‐opera ti ves aren’t a fresh con ‐ cept, we see a resurgence in their popularity, poten ‐ ti ally mo ti vated by the growing debate about giving more voice to employees. As unique types of orga ‐ niza ti ons governed by the workers, it may be bene ‐ ficial to further analyze the concept of employee autonomy when this type of organiza ti on is trans ‐ lated to other industries, especially for ‐profit ones (Sacche tti & Tor ti a, 2021). Furthermore, flexible working arrangements tend to blur the lines when it comes to establishing and maintaining employee autonomy and control in the workplace as an increasing por ti on of the work ‐ force can work remotely or hybrid (Metselaar et al., 2023). How this a ffects gig workers and digital no ‐ mads may be an interes ti ng research path. Figure 9: Overlay visualiza ti on map on employee autonomy Source: Authors’ analysis DRMJ vol13 no01 2024 (print).qxp_Prelom 27/05/2024 12:45 Page 66 Dynamic Rela ti onships Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1, May 2024 67 7 CONCLUSION Through a mul ti technique bibliometric analysis of the employee autonomy concept from a dataset of 1041 ar ti cles indexed in the Scopus database, our objec ti ve was to answer what the inherent intellec ‐ tual structure of the employee autonomy body of re ‐ search is, what the most influen ti al concepts, themes, and hotspots are, and what new paths for future research on the topic exist. The findings from the descrip ti ve bibliometric analysis, co ‐authorship, and keyword co ‐occurrence analysis, which were ad ‐ di ti onally synthesized in the invisible colleges frame ‐ work for tracing the evolu ti onary development of the field, we focus on a few core themes such as benefits of employee autonomy, job sa ti sfac ti on and wellbe ‐ ing, environmental context, mo ti va ti on, employee behavior, organiza ti onal psychology, work organiza ‐ ti on, leadership, digitaliza ti on, and job performance. The study doesn’t come free of some limita ‐ ti ons as all bibliographic methods tend to have. This is why they should be complemented by other re ‐ view types. To begin with, the dataset relies only on the Scopus database, which future studies can use as a mo ti va ti on to further incorporate ar ti cles in ‐ dexed in other databases like the Google Scholar database, too. Then, di fferent reasons for low cita ‐ ti on rates, ci ti ng certain publica ti ons as well as self ‐ cita ti on cannot be fully established. In this sense, the clusters generated by the bibliometric so ft ware are not grounded in science and there is some dose of researcher’s input regarding decisions for cita ti on and ar ti cle thresholds. All in all, the analysis iden ti fied five paths for fu ‐ ture studies, focusing on the impact of ar ti ficial in ‐ telligence‐human collabora ti on and wearable technology on autonomy, the need for widening the research context to less ‐represented regions, and the rising popularity of worker co ‐opera ti ves and flexible working arrangements. As a result, the study makes several contribu ti ons. Firstly, policymakers can benefit from these findings when regula ti ng unioniza ti on and forms of increased employee par ‐ ti cipa ti on to further democra ti ze workplaces. Addi ‐ ti onally, prac titi oners and the academic community can benefit from the synthesized findings enriched with the invisible colleges framework for eleva ti ng the exis ti ng employee autonomy literature through a more comprehensive and objec ti ve review and analysis. EXTENDED SUMMARY/IZVLE ČEK V obdobju po fenomenih velikega odstopa, ti hega odstopa in vseprisotnega dela na daljavo, povezanimi z managementom človeških virov po COVID ‐19, se je zanimanje raziskovalcev za avtonomijo pri delu pove čalo na rekordno visoko raven. Poleg naraš čajo če znanstvene zrelos ti po ‐ dro čja obseg, v katerem bi morali zaposleni uživa ti avtonomijo pri oblikovanju svoje delovne obre ‐ menitve, izbiri metod dela in delovnega mesta ter vpliv na delovne rezultate, ni sinte ti ziran in je odprt za razprave. Obravnavamo evolucijsko razvojno pot tega koncepta z uporabo ve č tehnik bib ‐ liometri čne analize hkra ti in okvira nevidnih struktur raziskovalnega sodelovanja. Poleg tega raziskava predstavlja kombinacijo opisne bibliometri čne analize, soavtorstva in analize so časnega pojavljanja klju čnih besed, da preu či najnovejše raziskave in pretekle usmeritve raziskovalcev o avtonomiji pri delu. Tako prispevamo k akademskemu raziskavanju z razkrivanjem inherentne intelektualne struk ‐ ture avtonomije pri delu, raziskovanjem najvplivnejših konceptov in aktualnih tem ter prikazovanjem novih po ti za prihodnje raziskave. Analiza je izpostavila osrednje teme, vklju čno s koristmi avtonomije zaposlenih, zadovoljstvom in dobrem po čutju pri delu, okoljskim kontekstom, mo ti vacijo, vedenjem zaposlenih, organizacijsko psihologijo, organizacijo dela, vodenjem, digitalizacijo in uspešnostjo ter pet po ti za prihodnje študije. To puš ča prostor za nadaljnje navzkrižno opraševanje teme z drugimi managerskimi koncep ti . Ugotovitve imajo potencial, da koris ti jo oblikovalcem poli ti k, prak ti kom in akademski skupnos ti kot klju čnim deležnikom na podro čju. 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