New Perspectives in Work Design Research

Abstract

In this symposium, five early-career researchers from the recently established Centre for Transformative Work Design at the University of Western Australia would like to present five ongoing research projects that have employed different perspectives in studying work design. Based on a systematic review of the existing literature on organization-led work redesign interventions, Caroline Knight identified five types of top-down work redesign interventions and investigated the effectiveness of these interventions on performance and productivity. Building upon and extending the emergent phenomena perspective of organizational behavior, Florian E. Klonek proposed a new approach to study the social and emergent dynamics of relational work design and introduced a mobile application that could help achieve the ecological momentary assessment of relational work design. Based on a simulation study of work design, Daniela M. Andrei investigated the paradoxical effects of contextual uncertainty on the autonomy and enrichment of work that individuals designed for others and disconfirmed the idea that increased uncertainty could make individuals to design jobs with reduced autonomy and enrichment. Using longitudinal data from a 27-year cohort study, Yukun Liu investigated the childhood origins of young adults’ quality of work design and found that toddlers’ approach/withdrawal temperament could indirectly influence adults’ quality of work design through its positive effects on self-efficacy. Finally, drawing upon the recent research suggesting the cognitive perspective of work design, M.K. Ward proposed a integrative model connecting work design and work outcomes through multiple cognitive mechanisms, including attention, regulation, and the balancing activity of antagonistic neural networks. Jeffrey R. Edwards, an eminent researcher with an expertise in interdisciplinary work design research as well as research methodology, will serve as a discussant.