Freedom Brings Thriving: The Impact of Job Autonomy on Job Thriving and Its Boundary Conditions

With the continuous enhancement of the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) attribute of world economic development, how to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and enhance competitiveness with employee management as the entry point has become a topic that academia and enterprises pay more and more attention to. Based on 270 survey data obtained from empirical research, this research explores the impact of job autonomy on job thriving and its influencing mechanism based on self-determination theory and cognitive evaluation theory. In the research process, the regression model was used to test the mediating role of employees' Organization-based self-esteem in the process of job autonomy and the moderating role of employees' job insecurity in job autonomy affecting job thriving. The empirical results show that in the actual work experience, employees' job autonomy has a significant positive impact on Organization-based self-esteem and job thriving, employees' job insecurity plays a significant positive moderating role in the impact of job autonomy on Organization-based self-esteem, and Organization-based self-esteem plays a partial mediating role between job autonomy and job thriving. At the same time, this paper projects the research conclusions into reality and proposes that in the VUCA era, enterprises should pay attention to people-oriented, provide employees with appropriate work freedom and security, and individuals should give full play to their subjective initiative, improve work efficiency, and achieve job thriving.