Transformative Work Design: Synthesis and New Directions

How do we create healthy, meaningful, and productive work in the face of hybrid work models, shifting careers, technological advances, an aging workforce, and other such major contemporary changes? Transformative Work Design explores this crucial question by presenting a thorough, evidence-based view of work design. With contributions from 49 highly eminent authors in the field across 25 chapters, it synthesizes research on how work design influences critical outcomes like worker motivation, mental health, well-being, and job performance for individuals and teams.

The book also covers key methodologies for studying work design and explores new areas of research. For instance, authors explore how work design can shape identity and personality development, moving beyond the usual focus on wellbeing and performance outcomes. Additionally, the book shifts the traditional emphasis from understanding the outcomes of work design to unpacking the antecedents of work design. Chapters explore how various individual, team, organizational, and global factors shape the way people's work is designed, laying the foundation for understanding how to successfully redesign work.

Picking up this perspective, several chapters focus on how to change work design. By discussing 'top down' work redesigns, such as self-managing teams, and 'bottom up' approaches like playful work design and job crafting, pathways to creating better work are identified. A final section highlights critical issues raised by large-scale technological and demographic shifts, such as remote working trends, population aging, and rapid digitalization.

Sharon K. Parker, ARC Laureate Fellow, is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University, Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design at Curtin University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Science and in 2019 she was named among the world's most influential scientists and social scientists in the Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers list.

Caroline Knight is a Senior Lecturer in The University of Queensland Business School. Caroline's research focuses on understanding how we can design work which is optimally healthy for individuals and organisations. Her focus is on work design, remote and hybrid work, work redesign interventions, and well-being.

Florian Erik Klonek is a Senior Lecturer at Deakin University. He is interested in understanding effective social interactions and processes in the context of groupwork, teams and leadership.

Fangfang Zhang is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Transformative Work Design at Curtin University. She is also a CEPAR (Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research) Research Fellow located at the Centre for Transformative Work Design.