Centre PhD Student Runner-Up in 3 Minute Thesis Competition

Georgia Hay, a PhD student in the Centre for Transformative Work Design supervised by Sharon Parker and Patrick Dunlop, wowed audiences with her lively presentation of her PhD research. Georgia came runner up in the UWA Three Minute Thesis Competition for 2016. Congratulations Georgia on this excellent achievement!!

Georgia is examining how a local hospital is redesigning work in the operating theatre. She explains her research here:

For more information, contact Georgia on georgia.hay@research.uwa.edu.au

SIA Presentation: Those With Relevant Expertise Design More Enriched Work

Who designs enriched work? At the recent Safety Institute of Australia Convention in Sydney, Sharon Parker presented her and her colleagues' research on how different groups of people design their work. Using newly designed survey-based simulations, the research shows that members of the Safety Institute of Australia, who tend to be professionals with expertise in health and safety at work, design more enriched work than 'naive' work designers including students and managers. The research also showed that some forms of expertise, though, are less helpful. For example, professionals with high levels of expertise in Human Resources and Marketing tended to design poorer quality work.

The image below shows a word cloud of SIA members' response to the open-ended question "why do you design work this way?'

Click here for the feedback report for individuals who completed the survey

Where Does Work Design Come From?

Sharon Parker, Anja Van den Broeck, and David Holman are excited to announce that our new paper on the multi-level factors that can shape work design is soon to be published in the Academy of Management Annals.

In the paper, the authors argue that - despite much evidence that high quality work design is a key determinant of employee well-being, positive work attitudes, and job/organizational performance - many job incumbents continue to experience deskilled and demotivating work. As such, there is a need to understand better where work designs come from. The authors review research that investigates the factors that influence work design, and propose an integrative framework showing direct and indirect ways in which work design is shaped by the higher-level external context (global/ international, national and occupational factors), the organizational context, the local work context (work group factors), and individual factors.

Click here for the paper