Role ambiguity: 60 years of research reveals why unclear expectations destroy performance

Source study: Sawhney et al., 2026: A meta-analytic review of 60 years of role stressor research

Three workplace stressors, three different kinds of damage

The meta-study identified three distinct role stressors that plague modern workplaces. They're not interchangeable. Each one emerges from different conditions, depletes different resources, and damages different outcomes.

Role ambiguity hits first and hardest.

When expectations are unclear, people can't direct their effort, prioritize tasks, or figure out whether they're actually succeeding. The research found this to be the biggest driver of reduced performance, lower commitment, less satisfaction, and fewer citizenship behaviors. People literally don't know what they're supposed to do.

Role conflict creates a different kind of hell. Being asked to do contradictory things (when different bosses, teams, or policies pull you in opposite directions) drains you emotionally. The study found role conflict to be the strongest predictor of burnout, psychological distress, counterproductive work behavior, and turnover intentions. It leaves people feeling like they have to act against their own judgment. Eventually, they check out or leave.

Role overload is the simplest to understand. Too many tasks. Too little time. The study found this stressor most strongly linked to negative emotions and physical health symptoms. Bodies break down when pushed too hard for too long.

Most traditional organizations treat these as one vague blob called "stress." If they address them at all.

Yet the research makes clear: these are fundamentally different problems requiring different solutions.

The role-based organization

For many of the pioneering organizations we've visited, the role-based organization is arguably the most impactful different way of working.

Stijn Nijhuis runs Enreach, a Dutch company of around a thousand people that has operated as a role-based organization for nearly a decade. He told us recently:

The core idea is simple. Instead of locking people into one fixed job description (written by HR, approved by a manager, reviewed once a year) you break work down into smaller, more granular roles. People then pick up multiple roles. They craft their own work by combining roles where they have expertise, interest, and talent.

This is job crafting at an organizational scale, as the default operating system.

Francesca Moriani, CEO of VAR Group, an Italian company of around 4,000 people and part of the Rebel Cell network, writes in her recent book Braveship: "A person is not a role. In life, as in work, we play and can play multiple roles at the same time. A woman can easily be both a mother and a partner. Or, a single role can be played by several different people. Every game has a referee, and in every game the referee is a different person."

That's exactly what it is.

Roles can have different natures. Some are fixed and stable. Others evolve. They come and go as the work demands. Some organizations let people pick up one main role and a few smaller ones. Others let people pick up many smaller roles.

At Viisi, mortgage advisors hold a portfolio of roles that shifts over time. Hiring, onboarding, finance, strategy. No one has just one role.

What's especially interesting: in a role-based organization, leadership also becomes a role. Just a role among other roles. At NER Group in the Basque Country, team leadership roles (called representative roles) often take up only about 10% of someone's time. Leadership is no longer a full-time job position performed by one person. It becomes a part-time role, potentially filled by multiple people.

What makes a role actually work

For this to function, every role needs three things.

First, a clear purpose. Why does this role exist? What does it contribute? If there's no good reason for it to exist, it shouldn't.

Second, a clear domain with decision-rights and accountabilities. What can this role decide on its own? What is it responsible for delivering? The role is the authority in its domain.

Third, clear metrics. How do you know if the role is being fulfilled or not?

Without these three, you're just replacing one form of ambiguity with another. The specificity is what makes it work.

People self-select into their roles. But that self-selection can happen in different ways depending on the organization.

Distribution can be based on need and consensus by the team. The team discusses what's needed and who's the best fit.

Distribution can be based on talents, consent, and rotation. Roles rotate periodically so that no one gets stuck. And everyone develops.

Distribution can be based on goals, bidding, and market mechanisms. People essentially bid on roles and targets, and internal market dynamics determine who takes on what.

These are fundamentally different mechanisms. But they are guided by the same principle: people have agency over their own work.

When this self-selection works well, something powerful happens to the organization itself. As Stijn from Enreach put it: "The organization becomes much more fluid. As long as it's maintained, the explicit and implicit org chart are identical. And the org chart gets continuously updated, so everyone has an accurate picture of how the organization is shaped. So, you no longer need to build a new org chart and go through an entire implementation trajectory."

Transparency makes it stick

Transparency of roles is key to make the role-based organization work. That often means using IT tools like Nestr that make the role structure visible to everyone.

The tools should show who holds which roles. What role accountabilities are. How the roles are performing against their metrics.

This serves two purposes. First, it makes clear who is doing what. No more guessing. No more politics about who's responsible.

Second (and this is the powerful part) it enables peer feedback on roles, not on the people executing those roles.

That distinction matters enormously. It makes it much easier to address underperformance without it becoming personal.

You're no longer saying "You're bad at your job."

You're now saying "This role isn't delivering on its metrics. What needs to change?"

The difference is everything.

Back to the research

The three biggest workplace stressors and their role-based fix (Sawhney et al., 2026)

This is where it all connects back to that meta-study.

The power of the role-based organization is that it directly solves the three role stressors that 60 years of research have shown destroy performance, well-being, and commitment.

Role ambiguity disappears. People self-select into roles with clear purposes and accountabilities. They know exactly what their roles are supposed to do.

Role conflict dissolves. Roles have clear decision-rights. Each role decides for itself what the best course of action is. You can't be forced to do contradictory things when the authority sits within the role.

Role overload becomes manageable. People decide for themselves how many roles they take on. If you're overloaded, you can hand back a role. The system is designed for it.

One honest caveat: the last two points aren't automatic. They also require personal development.

Even if you're completely autonomous in your role, you still need to stand up against peer pressure. You still need to learn to say no. You still need the confidence to push back when the team wants you to take on more than you can handle.

The role-based organization creates the structure. But people need to grow into it.

That's why the most successful progressive organizations invest as much in individual development as they do in organizational design. The structure gives freedom. The development gives people the ability to actually use it.

What struck me most about the meta-study wasn't just the size - though 800,000 people is staggering. It was how clearly it distinguishes between different types of role stress. For decades, we've known work can be stressful. Now we know exactly which kind of stress does which kind of damage.

And we know what to do about it.

Ready to build the role clarity that 60 years of research says actually works?

You now have the diagnosis: role ambiguity is the single most damaging stressor at work, and role-based organizations are the proven cure. Knowing that is one thing. Building it is another.

That is exactly what our 6-week Masterclass, Progressive Organizational Design, is for. An entire week is dedicated to roles and responsibilities: how to define clear purposes, decision-rights, and metrics, how people self-select into roles, and how to keep the whole structure transparent as you scale. You learn it from the pioneers in this article, including Viisi, alongside Buurtzorg, Haier, and NER Group.

No academics theorizing. No consultants selling recycled frameworks. Just proven structures from the 200+ organizations we have actually visited, distilled into an implementation plan you can run in your own company. You also join 485+ alumni and a global network of 1,200+ pioneers across 38+ countries.