Sharon Parker John Curtin Distinguished Professor, Curtin University & Director, Centre for Transformative Work Design

ARC Laureate Fellow Sharon K. Parker is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University and the Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology.

Sharon has received several prestigious awards, including the WA Premier’s Scientist of the Year Award, the People’s Choice Award (2024), ARC’s Kathleen Fitzpatrick Award, and the Academy of Management OB Division Mentoring Award. Last year, she was recognized as Curtin University’s Research Leader of the Year.

With 280 academic publications and 51,653 citations, she ranks in the top 0.15% of global scholars in her field. Sharon has served as an Associate Editor for both the Journal of Applied Psychology and the Academy of Management Annals. She has secured over $70 million in competitive research funding and collaborated with various public and private organisations. Additionally, she is the Founder of the SMART model, Co-founder of the Thrive at Work Initiative, and has contributed to work design policy both in Australia and internationally.

In this presentation, Sharon Parker will present an overview of the SMART Model of Work Design; a higher-order structure of work characteristics that covers five overarching categories of psychologically-important aspects of work: Stimulating, Mastery, Autonomy, Relational, and Tolerable.

She will describe some recent studies and practical applications of the SMART model, and will discuss how the model can be applied to support the effective design and implementation of Agile working.