ICT-enabled Work Experiences through the Lens of Work Design - Bin Wang, PhD Completion

Bin Wang has received the excellent news that PhD thesis has been passed with two “A” recommendations from the examiners. Both examiners have indicated that Bin's thesis is deserving of a letter of commendation from the Chancellor of the University.

Bin started his PhD in 2018 at the Centre for Transformative Work Design, funded by the Centre's International PhD Scholarship. Bin was supervised by Professor Sharon Parker and Dr Yukun Liu.

In his thesis entitled “Thrive in a Digital Age: Understanding ICT-enabled Work Experiences through the Lens of Work Design”, Bin aims to understand the intertwined relationships among technology, human beings, and work.

Bin says:

“Departing from the plethora of superficial debates on whether technology is good or bad, what has been omitted, yet is more important, is a comprehensive understanding on how technology influences workers, how it interacts with other factors in influencing workers, and what workers can do to thrive in the current and future digital eras."

"In other words, humans are not just passive recipients of technological changes. We, therefore, need move to a more proactive and less deterministic stance (Parker & Grote, 2020) which allows humans and technologies work in harmony."

To address the overarching research goal, Bin, from the perspective of work design, conducted three studies (3 articles). Article 1 presents an interdisciplinary review of ICT use at work and found that ICT use affects employees through shaping three key aspects of work design: job demands, job autonomy, and the relational aspects of work. Articles 2 focused on a newly emerged form of ICT, social media use at work, and found that the day-to-day use of social media at work was positively associated with perceptions of social connectedness, which was further positively associated with life satisfaction and task performance. Bin and his co-authors also found that the relationship between daily social media use at work and perceived social connectedness was stronger for employees with higher, rather than lower, workloads. Article 3 investigated the major challenges that people are struggling with in ICT-enabled work, and how work design could help workers thrive in a digital age. Article 1 has been published in Academy of Management Annals; and Article 3 has been accepted by Applied Psychology: An International Review.

In sum, this thesis reveals the effectiveness of the work design perspective in integrating the relationships among technology, human beings, and work in the current digital era. Implications from this research contribute to building a harmonious relationship between human beings and technologies in ICT-enabled work.

Bin explains:

“Technology is ever advancing and rapidly, which means that findings from the current research may lose some contextual relevance and may need to be updated in the future. Yet one basic tenet of work design theories will be unchanged. Humans should always be placed at the center of the technological and social systems at work, regardless of what and how technologies are used. In light of this, I am confident that future technologies will not prevent or limit us in any way from thriving in our digitalized work. Human beings will strive to obtain the needed knowledge, abilities, and skills to embrace any changes brought by new technologies or new ways of working, as we always do,”

Both examiners comments on Bin's thesis are as follows:

Examiner 1:

“After reviewing this thesis, it is my opinion that it (this thesis) contributes original and substantial knowledge to our understanding of information communication technologies and the nature of an employee’s job and experiences. In addition to the excellent literature review, it pursues interesting research questions that are well articulated and gathers and analyses new data. Moreover, it uses multilevel modelling and advanced analytical approaches to conduct statistical analyses of the data. By developing new conceptual and designing studies to test them, this thesis moves beyond existing knowledge in this area.”

Examiner 2:

“The candidate has provided a comprehensive, state-of-the-art literature review. The work of this candidate is excellent and impressive. I would even consider going for the judicium cum laude (with honor) if I was part of the supervising team. High quality writing (reads like a novel), advanced statistical skills, multiple methods and research designs. Very good.”

Reference list

Wang, B., Liu, Y., & Parker, S. K. 2020. How does the use of information communication technology affect individuals? A work design perspective. Academy of Management Annals, 14(2): 695–725.

Wang, B., Liu, Y., Qian, J. Parker, S.K. Accepted. Achieving effective remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic: A work design perspective. Applied Psychology: An International Review.

CTWD Researcher Highly Commended in 2020 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards

Congratulations to our Research Fellow, Giverny de Boeck who was selected as a highly commended winner in the Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards (ODRAs)!

Her thesis, The Realization of Potential in the Workplace: An Employer and Employee Perspective, supervised by Prof Nicky Dries, is highly commended in the field of Human Resources Management.

The Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards (ODRAs) aims to recognise and reward exceptional doctoral research

For a full list of award winners, please click here:

https://www.efmdglobal.org/awards/outstanding-doctoral-research-awards/odra-winners-2020/

Sharon Parker recognised as one of Australia’s leading researchers in business,economics &management

Published in The Australian on 23 September , Julie Hare

Sharon Parker was acknowledged in The Australian’s Lifetime Achievers Leaderboard, which lists the top 40 researchers from Australian universities and research institutions.

Sharon Parker

Organisational behaviour expert, Curtin University

Research leader in the field of human resources and organisation

Back in 1930, John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, wrote in an essay predicting the future of work: “For the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem; how to occupy the leisure (time).” Keynes’ utopian 15-hour week hasn’t eventuated. The opposite is true.

“Greedy jobs” eat up 15-hour days for some; the gig economy depletes financial security for others.

What is common in a surprising number of jobs – not matter how elite or pedestrian – is how badly designed they are, says Sharon Parker, an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and professor of organisational behaviour at Curtin University’s Future of Work Institute. Her central focus is on the design of work: what makes jobs rewarding, meaningful, healthy, productive and stimulating.

“From a psychological perspective, when work is well-designed, workers have interesting tasks, autonomy over those tasks, a meaningful degree of social contact with others and a tolerable level of task demands,” Parker says.

For many, jobs are tedious, uninspiring, repetitive, dull and exhausting – whether we work in a high-end consultancy firm or an Amazon warehouse.

“Our research suggests, if you give people autonomy and agency and you trust them, they usually do a good job. They will be trustworthy and they will deliver on expectations.”

She says most jobs are a hangover from history – including the nine-tofive work day. Rarely, however, do managers ask the question: Could this job be done in a different, more efficient, more creative and better way?

To address the lack of design, Parker and her team have designed a framework called SMART. It embodies five key principles – stimulating, mastery, agency, relational and tolerable – that if adopted can guarantee fulfilling and rewarding work.

Parker’s research interests are now branching out into neuroscience: how different work design combinations impact cognitive functioning and whether SMART jobs can protect against Alzheimer’s.

Next year, she will launch what she hopes will be a 20-year study to track 10,000 individuals’ work experiences, with a particular focus on the impact of automation on jobs. It’s called WALC (Work Across Life and Careers).

Of course, the work revolution thrust upon almost the entire economy by the pandemic is rich pickings for Parker and her team. Their recent article in the Harvard Business Review explored how managers are coping with having staff working remotely during COVID. For many, not so well.

Parker and her co-authors found that 40 per cent of the 215 managers surveyed had low self-confidence in their ability to manage staff who were working remotely, and a similar number thought staff were slacking off, incompetent or lacked essential skills compared to in-office colleagues.

“The picture is a not a rosy one,” they write, with staff feeling distrusted and micromanaged by bosses who don’t feel in control.