PERSONAL quarterly 2/2020

9 02/20 PERSONALquarterly the importance of people being adaptive and agile. As technolo- gies replace tasks, people will need to be able to adjust to new ways of working and new systems. For example, people are pre- dicting quite radical changes to the role of general practitioners in the future. How do we prepare people for these changes? What sorts of meta-skills and mindsets will be important? I believe that organizational psychologists have a crucial role to play in answering these questions because we can draw on knowledge of concepts like personality, attitudes, beliefs, at the same time as draw on knowledge of work organization and culture. PERSONALquarterly: Based on your research, what can the practice of work and organizational psychologists learn? Sharon K. Parker: I do see the need for some reorientation. First, although organizational psychologists usually know more about work design than people in other professions, sometimes this knowledge is quite thin. In some of our masters in organi- zational psychology programs, for example, the students spend less than a day on this topic. So, I do think we need to enhance this part of the training in our field. Second, organizational psychology researchers need to get better at disseminating our research, and seek to enhance our impact. Often, I find that we fly under the radar. Economists are deeply involved in debates about whether there will be any jobs in the future. But the debate about the quality of that work in the future gets much less attention. I’d like to see psychologists getting their research out there so we can influence practice and policy. In our Centre for Transformative Work Design (https://www. transformativeworkdesign.com), we ’re working hard to get our messages out. As an example, the topic of work design can be a bit abstract so we have introduced the ‘SMART’ model in which S refers to having Stimulating work design (e.g., task variety, problem-solving demands), M refers to Mastery-Oriented work design (e.g., being clear what is expected, receiving feedback), A refers to Agentic work design (e.g., autonomy over methods and scheduling, involvement in decision-making), R refers to Relational work design (e.g., having social support, connecting with end-users), and T refers to Tolerable work design (having a manageable work load and reasonable levels of other de- mands). We’ve created resources, such as videos and measures (smartworkdesign.com.au ), that are freely available to help managers and employers design SMART work. Another experiment we tried is that we brought in an artist- in-residence, and collaborated with the artist to sketch people in all sorts of different jobs doing their work. The sketches and the stories that we have created from interviews with the wor- kers, have provided a powerful way to convey the idea of good or bad work design. PERSONALquarterly: What should we as scientists look for in our research in the future? Sharon K. Parker: I think we need more detailed longitudinal eva- luations of the introduction of new technologies, ideally qua- litative and quantitative in methods, that focus on human and work design issues, alongside efficiency and effectiveness. The sorts of questions we can address include: how human auto- nomy and accountability might be affected as machine-based learning creates more autonomous forms of technology; how people craft their work in the light of new technologies; and what sorts of processes and tools foster the design of better quality work during technology implementation. There are some exciting studies emerging which are incre- dibly useful in helping us to understand what is happening when new robots or AI systems are being introduced. Over time, this evidence will hopefully translate into development of tools and methods to help organizations adopt sociotechnical approaches. And then I think it is crucial we have more inter- vention studies in which organizations take deliberate steps to achieve better work, and researchers help to fully evaluate the consequences of this action. Unfortunately, though, such longitudinal and intervention studies are currently quite rare in our field, perhaps because it’s difficult to publish them in top tier journals. So, as well as encouraging researchers to do this research, I encourage editors and reviewers to be open to these sorts of in-depth and intervention studies as well. As organizational psychologists, we also need to be open to collaborating with people from other disciplines, such as engineering, design, information technology, economics, and sociology. I think it’s through such collaborations that we can best tackle some of the big challenges ahead, and indeed, make the biggest difference. „A positive view of technology is that it will support a move away from hierarchies towards a coaching, lateral and supportive understanding of leadership.“ Sarah K. Parker