Personal Autonomy in the Workplace

We have presented a general argument for the existence of rights to psychological autonomy, which are analogous to other rights, such as freedom of opinion, expression, and association, that also have their foundations in the moral value of personal autonomy. We then argued that electronic surveillance in the workplace may contribute to the distortion or reduction of personal autonomy in the workplace by interfering with workers motivational attitudes or with their executive qualities. The next step is to ask whether the rights to psychological autonomy outlined in section 2 hold in the workplace, or whether they are more limited in scope.

It might be thought that the question of rights to psychological autonomy in the workplace is already covered by the existing literature, which defends the importance of worker autonomy. Worker autonomy has been defined variously as the control that workers have over their own work situation (Brey, 1999,p . 16); the degree to which the job provides substantial freedom, independence and discretion in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out (Hackman & Oldham, 1975,p. 162, quoted in Brey, 1999,p. 16); and the freedom to do what we are supposed to do as we see best (Solomon, 1994,p. 392).

Here, however, we are discussing something rather different. Worker autonomy, concerned particularly with the practical ability of agents to act in the workplace upon certain of their values, is no doubt valuable in its own right. However, in our view, personal autonomy covers a wider terrain than worker autonomy, since it concerns not only agents abilities to act upon their values and preferences in the workplace, but also the way in which they arrive at and maintain those values and preferences, whether it occurs in the workplace or elsewhere. In other words, the accounts of worker autonomy given above cover only one aspect of personal autonomy; it is quite possible for a person to have a reasonable degree of worker autonomy, while at the same time substantially lacking personal autonomy.

Consider Wanda, a worker employed on contract in an Australian university, public service department, or private sector corporation. Wanda has considerable control over some aspects of her work situation, in that she can choose the order in which she performs her allotted tasks and is able to adjust her working methods to some degree to suit herself. But at the same time, Wanda has relatively little control over the values that her employers encourage her to hold (or over the attitudes that she is expected to have towards the workplace) and to exemplify in her workplace. Devices such as motivational seminars , subtle rewards, and punishments applied to Wanda s behaviour, and work conditions such as lack of job security have all been used to encourage Wanda to value, unreflectively, a particular concept of worker productivity and the success of the organisation that employs her. If Wanda accepts these values without the exercise of her critical and reflective capacities necessary for her to satisfy the competency and authenticity conditions for personal autonomy, then she lacks personal autonomy with regard to those values. So, it would seem, on the basis of cases like Wanda s, that worker autonomy as generally defined in the literature is not sufficient (even if it is necessary) for personal autonomy.

Does Wanda have rights to psychological autonomy in the workplace, rights that might protect her from attempts by her employer to change her values? Wanda s employer might believe that she does not. Wanda s personal autonomy is simply not her employer s business. She is, her employer holds, free to exercise her personal autonomy outside work hours, but when she is at work, she should be aiming at maximising her productivity in line with extant workplace values. If this involves her holding certain values rather others, then she should hold the values in question. Her employer might point to the fact that it is generally accepted that there is nothing prima facie morally wrong with a person autonomously contracting to give over some time, skills, and effort in exchange for remuneration, so long as the contract is just and fair.

Drawing on these understandings, Wanda s employer might hold that personal autonomy is not an important value in the workplace, because the workplace is sufficiently far removed from Wanda s own life and how it is lived, and that lack of autonomy in the workplace is not damaging to her personal autonomy. In doing so, the employer assumes that the substantive practice of autonomy goes on in the private sphere, at home, and in extracurricular communities of choice, and that what happens at work and the values accepted in the workplace do not reduce her autonomy in the private sphere. Provided that Wanda retains personal autonomy regarding those values that concern her own life (construed as her private life), then infringements of autonomy in the workplace will not affect the core of her personal autonomy.

There are two reasons to doubt claims of this sort . First, as a generalisation about all workers in all employment situations, it is empirically false. It is, of course, true that most people are willing to give up some portion of their autonomy ” in the sense of freedom to pursue chosen values at all times ” in exchange for remuneration; and indeed, this seems a most reasonable course of action given that autonomy is not the only or most important value. But it is not true that people are generally willing to sacrifice their psychological autonomy; that is, to relinquish their freedom to rationally choose, maintain, or revise their values, in exchange for remuneration, and such relinquishment seems far from reasonable. Many people work for reasons beyond financial or material reward. They also seek and often derive fulfillment from their employment. The Victorian Law Reform Commission notes the centrality of work to people s lives and the fact that it provides people with more than financial security: it is also a source of social and community life; a place where what one values and works for is shared with others; and a way of contributing to the community in which one lives (Victorian Law Reform Commission, 2002,p. 1). ^[7] Accordingly, many people are unlikely to consider work as a trade-off between autonomy and remuneration. Indeed, the workplace is, for some people, one of the most important loci of autonomy in which they express values and pursue choices reflecting those values.

This seems particularly (though not exclusively) true of workers who are members of professions . Professionalism demands, in both ethical and instrumental terms, the substantial and regular exercise of the agent s capacity for autonomy (Ardagh, 2003). Put simply, professionals require allowances and respect for their exercise of personal autonomy (including privacy within which to reflect and make decisions) in order to be able to function professionally. Surveillance can undermine professionalism in three main ways. First, the object of surveillance may be less comfortable, confident, and effective as a decision maker if that person is aware of the likelihood or fact of surveillance. Second, the professional may resent what he or she perceives as an unjustified intrusion on personal autonomy and an implicit doubting of his or her own judgement and trustworthiness , and may react in ways that are contrary to his or her own interests, those of the employing organization, or even those of the broader profession. Third, the professional may tend to cede autonomy and act as he or she thinks the employer or manager would want him or her to act, thereby abdicating personal professional responsibility to reflect and make decisions, even though there is no direct attempt to coerce the professional into taking a certain course of action. This last example is a classic case of covert non-constraining control.

Thus, assertions that the workplace is an area in which personal autonomy is not important are unconvincing. For many, and perhaps most, people the domain of their own life includes aspects of their working life. Construing the domain of one s own life as coextensive with the private sphere, and excluding the workplace, is implausibly narrow. There is, thus, some support for the claim that the fact that the workplace is not an arena in which employers or managers are exempt from the general requirements of respect for autonomy rights, including rights to psychological autonomy.

There is a second reason to doubt the claim of Wanda s employer that personal autonomy does not extend to the workplace. Even if the domain of a worker s own life does not itself extend as far as the workplace, values encouraged in the workplace nonetheless compete with and threaten to crowd out values that the worker might choose in the domain of his or her own life. For example, an employing organisation wishes its workers to value aggression and dedication to a particular kind of productive work, even at the expense of the family life of its workers, because this approach is considered in the overall best interests of the organisation. But adherence to these workplace values clearly affects and concerns workers own lives in so far as it directly competes, in practical terms, with workers private commitments to values such as dedication to child-rearing, or a preference for cooperative or conciliatory behaviour over aggression. Further, it is difficult to believe that a worker who has come unreflectively to value competitiveness and aggression in the workplace will be willing and able to shed those values outside the workplace. The claim that infringements of autonomy at work will not affect the core of an agent s personal autonomy, since the domains of working and private life are separate, cannot be sustained.

It should be noted, though, that approaches to value change that encourage the skills associated with autonomy, such as critical reflection and self-examination, will not undermine psychological autonomy. For instance, while a motivational seminar that encourages employees to embrace values uncritically may undermine personal autonomy, a seminar that encourages employees to reflect critically on the values endorsed in the workplace, or on their own values, could be conducted without undermining their psychological autonomy.

It is also worth clarifying that not all uses of electronic surveillance will, by any means, undermine employees autonomy. It is only in certain fairly specific types of situations that electronic surveillance forms part of a wider apparatus aimed at coercively changing employees values in ways that undermine autonomy. Thus, a range of uses of electronic surveillance may be morally justified, at least insofar as they do not undermine employees autonomy. One such use might be the monitoring, with advance notice, of employees against whom serious allegations (such as of workplace harassment or bullying ) have been made.

It seems, then, that if individuals have rights to psychological autonomy, these rights apply in the workplace, as well as outside it. That an employer remunerates a worker does not give the employer or manager leave to manipulate the worker s values in such a way that personal autonomy is reduced or distorted . The task of distinguishing between influences that undermine or distort personal autonomy and those that do not is performed at the theoretical level by the competency and authenticity conditions provided by a procedural account of autonomy that takes into account externalist considerations. If we think of the autonomous person as one who exercises the various capacities associated with personal autonomy (such as the introspective, imaginative, memory, communication, analytical, reasoning, volitional, and interpersonal skills proposed by Meyers), then the exercise of autonomy is perfectly consistent with some degree of influence from others. So long as the influence in question is not one that undermines or distorts the exercise of these capacities by their owner, then a worker will retain his or her current level of personal autonomy. As we noted above, while the practical task of distinguishing between these types of cases may be difficult, we do not believe that this is any excuse for ignoring or condoning attacks on personal autonomy, in the workplace or elsewhere. The difficulty of this task should instead be a spur for further research.

^[7] The Victorian Law Reform Commission s discussion of the importance of work is in the context of an analysis of privacy in the workplace. The authors view is that the concept of privacy incorporates those of autonomy and dignity . Our view, by contrast, is that the value of autonomy grounds rights, including rights to privacy and the psychological autonomy rights that we defend in this chapter.