Our Centre had the pleasure of hosting Michela Carraro, a PhD candidate in organizational behavior from the University of Padova in Italy.
During her visit, Michela presented her research on worker perceptions accuracy and the role of job autonomy in operations.
We caught up with Michela to learn more about her experience at FOWI, her thoughts on the future of work, and a surprising childhood dream.
Tell me a bit about yourself?
In 2019, I graduated in Business Administration at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Padova. After my graduation, I immediately started my PhD in organizational behavior at the same university and I am currently preparing to defend my dissertation on “Coordinating minds and behaviors in the shop floor”.
What will you do / are you doing at CTWD / FOWI?
I presented my research on the antecedents of perception accuracy at one of the FOWI internal seminars and collected a lot of feedback that helped me improving my work. I also started a new collaboration with Dr. Fangfang Zhang and Prof. Sharon Parker to study the relationship between digital technologies (AR) and job crafting.
How did you find the experience?
I loved being at FOWI. FOWI is a place full of energy and enthusiasm, where anyone can contribute with ideas and feel part of the team. Visiting FOWI and meeting such a wonderful team inspired me a lot. I was impressed in particular by the coherence of FOWI: doing research on how to design good jobs is not only aimed at publishing or giving instructions to external practitioners, rather it is an internal mission.
What does the future of work look like to you?
To me, the future of work is all about the integration between human beings and technologies. In the past, there used to be the idea that one day technological developments would have completely replaced human beings. However, technologies cannot exist without human beings thinking of, designing, setting, maintaining, and assigning goals to them. Of course, technological developments are changing the ways works are done but human beings remain at the center of work. And human beings have different and much more complex capabilities and needs relative to technologies. I think that bearing this in mind is fundamental to design sustainable future works.
One thing not many people know about you?
My dream as a child was to become Miss Italia.