Managing in all the right directions? The relationship between public managers’ perceived autonomy and leading upwards, sidewards, outwards and downwards

Although researchers have discussed autonomy as important at the organizational level, the autonomy of the individual manager has not received similar attention. Knowledge about how managerial autonomy is used is, however, important for understanding the conditions under which management matters. We ask whether perceived managerial autonomy enables public managers to prioritize their efforts to support their individual career progression, organizational goal attainment, or both. Based on survey-data from 854 Danish public managers, we find perceived managerial autonomy is positively related to managers ability of aligning their time efforts towards as well their own career progression as towards obtaining organizational goals.