PROFESSOR SHARON K PARKER
ARC Laureate Fellow Sharon K. Parker BSc (Hons, UWA; PhD Sheffield, FASSA) is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor in Organisational Behaviour in the Faculty of Business and Law, Curtin University. Sharon is a world-leading researcher on the topic of work design, as well as other topics such as proactivity, mental health and job performance. She is a recipient of one of the most prestigious research fellowships in Australia, the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences; and a Fellow of the US Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology. Sharon’s research has been cited more than 37,000 times internationally and she has also been recognised as one of the world’s most influential scientists and social scientists in the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list released by the Web of Science Group, as well as the 2020 World's Top 2% Scientists list by Stanford University.
Sharon is the Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design (transformativeworkdesign.com) and is the Chief Investigator of the Mature Workers in Organisations stream of the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing (matureworkers.cepar.edu.au). She has served on numerous editorial boards and is a former Associate Editor for the highest impact management journal, Academy of Management Annals and the leading organisational psychology journal, Journal of Applied Psychology. Throughout her career, Sharon has attracted competitive research funding worth over $46 million.
Sharon engages regularly with leading business and government representatives. She has worked as a researcher and consultant in a wide range of public and private organisations, has delivered numerous keynote talks/executive education for practitioner audiences, and regularly engages with the media. She is a co-founder of the highly successful Thrive at Work initiative (thriveatwork.org.au) designed to improve mental health at work. She has published high-impact articles in the Harvard Business Review, the Conversation, and other practitioner outlets and has contributed to various government inquiries and policy reviews. She was the lead consultant on the national Good Work Design initiative, SafeWork Australia, is a member of the National Mental Health Commission National Workplace Initiative, and is regularly consulted by policymakers on topics such as flexible working and mental health.
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Sharon’s mentoring expertise has been recognised with her receiving the ARC’s Kathleen Fitzpatrick Award and the US Academy of Management OB Division Mentoring Award. She established the highly successful Women in Research initiative (womeninresearch.org.au) to support academic women.
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Sharon received her PhD at the University of Sheffield, UK, where she is an Honorary Professor and where she was previously Director of the Institute of Work Psychology. She is also an Honorary Fellow at the University of Western Australia. She lives in Perth, Australia with her partner and three teenage daughters.
