Imagine an organization that have a legitimate fear to automatic updates. That organization thinks that an automatic update may break a business use case. For example, when the VPN client is update the users are no longer able to connect to the VPN. By automatic I mean installing the app without the organization participation and without the organization being able to test the update in advance.
How can an organization control when and when not an app update in installed in an Android smartphone or device?
As long as I know, if you install an app using the Play Store, the organization cannot control the updates if the user enables "automatic updates".
If the organization install the app using the APK, the application is not updated automatically but in the future the organization has to update manually the app and also if you install the app using the APK the app is not installed as "device manager" and the app can be uninstalled by the user (think in a security app like a MDM agent).
The organization uses an MDM (Airwatch) but it does not allow to control the update of Play Store installed apps.