Autonomy
Capacity for control, discretion or political self-governance / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Autonomy (disambiguation).
"Autonomous" redirects here. For the novel, see Autonomous (novel).
Not to be confused with Autotomy.
In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy[note 1] is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be defined from a human resources perspective, where it denotes a (relatively high) level of discretion granted to an employee in his or her work.[1] In such cases, autonomy is known to generally increase job satisfaction. Self-actualized individuals are thought to operate autonomously of external expectations.[2] In a medical context, respect for a patient's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medicine.