CTWD Early Career Visiting Scholarships: Full list of recipients

The Centre for Transformative Work Design look forward to progressing new ideas and collaboration this year with the help of our recipients of the inaugural Early Career Visiting Scholarships.

The scholarship provides high-flying and promising early career researchers an opportunity to visit the Centre and work on nominated research projects:

• Antecedents of work design

• New outcomes of work design

The scholarship recipients were determined by the quality, fit, and feasibility of their proposed research during their visit. Each recipient will receive a return economy flight & accommodation for up to one month and a small stipend of $500 towards additional research/ travel expenses.

Here is the full list of recipients:

• Hai-Jiang Wang from Huazhong University of Science & Technology (China)

• Melissa Twemlow from Vrije Universisteit Amsterdam (Netherlands)

• Ulrike Fasbender from Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (Germany)

• Bernadeta Gostautaite from ISM University of Management & Economics (Lithuania)

• Hannah Berkers from Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (Netherlands)

• Sabine Waschull from the University of Groningen (Netherlands)

• Katharina Klug from the University of Hamburg (Germany)

• Anita Keller from TS Groningen (Netherlands)

• Anne Casper from Mannheim University (Germany)

• Tom McIlroy from the University of Queensland (Australia)

We look forward to further strengthen the research culture of CTWD through the presence of these dynamic, enthusiastic and well-trained early career researchers.

CTWD researchers develop new software to track and improve teamwork

Curtin University researchers from the Centre for Transformative Work Design have developed a new web-based tool that can track and measure teamwork in ‘real-time’, potentially improving workplace practices for teams and helping them to be more effective.

The research, published in Small Group Research, introduced and evaluated a new software, called Communication Analysis Tool (CAT), which measures, analyses and visualises team members working together on important tasks, such as when surgical teams work directly on patients in the operating theatre.

Lead author Dr Florian Klonek, from the Centre for Transformative Work Design based at Curtin’s Future of Work Institute, said CAT had the potential to drastically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of research on team collaboration processes within organisations.

“CAT was developed from a healthcare field research project where we observed the ways teams exchanged information when trying to diagnose patients who suffer from complex and rare diseases. It soon became clear we needed a way to better understand these interactions and help teams work together more effectively,” Dr Klonek said.

“CAT helps to identify team communication patterns which are important for team effectiveness. The researchers have used the software to ‘code’ and track the specific time points of knowledge sharing behaviours for each meeting. The software then produces a data dashboard which provides immediate feedback to the team and allows them to implement practical changes.

“The software solves a widespread problem, in that good teamwork and communication are fundamental to the performance of an organisation, but often managers and executives find these things somewhat ‘fluffy’ topics that are intangible and difficult to measure.”

Dr Klonek said the new software had important practical implications for understanding how teams who operated in the ‘wild’, such as military and flight crews, worked together.

“We found that traditional methods like using surveys can be too disruptive or obtrusive and only provides very limited insights. Also automated approaches such as voice analysis are less reliable and only work in tightly controlled and small-space laboratory environments, whereas CAT is more suitable for doing research within ‘messy’ team environments,” Dr Klonek said.

“CAT also reduces the time spent for recording and analysing data, which allows ‘real-time’ feedback and immediate translation of research, which in turn can improve teamwork efficiency.”

The research was co-authored by researchers from the Centre for Transformative Work Design based at Curtin’s Future of Work Institute and the University of Hamburg in Germany.

The paper titled ‘Capturing Team Dynamics in the Wild: The Communication Analysis Tool,’ can be found online here.

Florian Klonek

Georgia Hay

Sharon Parker

Why we should move closer to the ideas of New Work when implementing new technologies

Our Director, Sharon Parker, has been featured on PERSONALquarterly!

PERSONALquarterly is a German-based science journal which publishes the latest scientific findings on the area of Human Resources, directed for HR professionals.

In the article "Why we should move closer to the ideas of New Work when implementing new technologies?", she advocated for the concept of New Work in relation to work design.

New Work is defined as the changed expectations of employees with regard to participation, autonomy and the creation of meaning through work towards a coaching, lateral and supporting understanding of leadership.

Simply put, today's workers expect their managers and employers to enable and support motivating, meaningful work that is not overly stressful for their employees.

"Whilst the full concept of New Work might be a bit radical for many organisations, and indeed it is more wide-ranging than what I focus on here, I enthusiastically welcome any moves towards creating work that people experience as more meaningful, agentic, and aligned with their interests," says Professor Parker, as quoted from the article.

The full interview can be found here.