Autonomy Isn't Choice

Two sessions at the IDTX: Evidence-Informed Practice set up the same argument from opposite ends. Matthew Richter talked about autonomy in self-determination theory and separated it from a word we use as though the two were interchangeable: choice. Kurt Ewald Lindley spent his session on agency, on the people we train becoming agents in producing change rather than the targets of it. Autonomy is the thread between them.

Choice and volition

Autonomy, in self-determination theory, is one of three basic psychological needs, alongside competence and relatedness (Ryan and Deci, 2000). It describes acting with a sense of volition: endorsing what you’re doing and recognising it as your own, rather than feeling pushed into it by pressure or obligation. Choice is narrower; it’s the presence of options. We treat the two as the same thing, and the conflation is where the design problems start.

You can hand someone a long menu of options and leave them no more autonomous than before, because the options are trivial. You can also give someone no choice about whether they do something, explain why it matters in terms they can endorse, and leave them with a strong sense of volition. Reeve, Nix, and Hamm (2003) tested this, comparing the experiential qualities people associate with self-determination, and found that internal locus and volition held up as markers of autonomy while perceived choice did not. Choice can support autonomy, but it isn’t the active ingredient, and adding more of it won’t reliably produce volition.

In training, the autonomy we reach for is usually choice in disguise: pick your own modules, choose your own path through the screens. None of it touches what produces volition, which is a person understanding the point of the work and endorsing it as worth their effort. A clear rationale, work that connects to something the person values, and room for their own judgement will do more for autonomy than any number of optional paths.

From autonomy to agency

Kurt’s argument starts here. Agency is being the origin of your own actions, an agent in the change rather than a recipient of it, and self-determination theory treats people as agentic by default; autonomy is the condition that lets that capacity show up instead of being suppressed. When people act with volition, they internalise the motivation behind a behaviour and take it on as their own, and internalised motivation is the kind that survives once the training is over and nobody’s watching. Controlled motivation, the kind we manufacture with mandates and incentives, produces movement while the pressure’s applied and little once it’s removed. Change that holds depends on autonomy.

The workplace case

Autonomy-supportive conditions at work relate to better performance and better wellbeing, with the type of motivation people hold doing much of the explaining (Deci, Olafsen, and Ryan, 2017). A meta-analysis of leader autonomy support found it associated with more autonomous motivation, greater satisfaction of basic psychological needs, higher wellbeing, lower distress, and a cluster of positive work behaviours including proactive and prosocial action (Slemp et al., 2018). Proactive behaviour is agency: people initiating and improving things instead of waiting to be told. The conditions that support autonomy are the conditions that produce employees who act like agents.

We can’t hand people agency, and we can’t manufacture it with a menu of options. What we can do is build the conditions for autonomy into the work, give people a reason worth endorsing and the latitude to act on it, and let the agency follow. Matt and Kurt were working the same ground from opposite ends, and our job is in the middle: designing for volition, which options alone won’t deliver.

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References

Deci, E.L., Olafsen, A.H. and Ryan, R.M. (2017) ‘Self-determination theory in work organizations: the state of a science’, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, pp. 19-43.

Reeve, J., Nix, G. and Hamm, D. (2003) ‘Testing models of the experience of self-determination in intrinsic motivation and the conundrum of choice’, Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), pp. 375-392.

Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000) ‘Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being’, American Psychologist, 55(1), pp. 68-78.

Slemp, G.R., Kern, M.L., Patrick, K.J. and Ryan, R.M. (2018) ‘Leader autonomy support in the workplace: a meta-analytic review’, Motivation and Emotion, 42(5), pp. 706-724.