Keynote Address 1 | Professor Sharon Parker
| Thursday, October 29, 2026 |
| 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM |
| Ballroom A (SFS) |
Overview
Quality Work in a Digital Age: Opportunities, Threats, and A Role for IO Psychology.
Presenter
Prof. Sharon Parker
Curtin University
Quality Work in a Digital Age: Opportunities, Threats, and A Role for IO Psychology
12:30 PM - 1:30 PMAbstract
Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence present enormous opportunities for improving worker health, well-being, and performance, as well as for boosting productivity. Many organisations are investing heavily in these new technologies, yet struggling to realise the expected benefits. Meantime work quality is not always improved, with employees often finding themselves with increased demands, reduced autonomy, and other downsides. In this session, using the SMART Work Design model as a framework, I will examine how AI and other digital technologies are reshaping people’s roles and responsibilities, and why successful transformation requires proactive attention to work design issues. I conclude with why now is an exciting and important time for IO Psychology, and how researchers and practitioners in this field have a powerful opportunity to help realise quality work in a digital age.
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Sharon K. Parker is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, Director of the Centre for Transformative Work Design at Curtin University, and a John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Organisational Behaviour in the Curtin Faculty of Business and Law. She received the ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Award for mentoring and the Academy of Management OB Division Mentoring Award. She was named Curtin University’s Research Leader of the Year in 2023 and WA Premier Scientist of the Year in 2024.
Professor Parker’s research focuses on job and work design, proactive behaviour, employee performance, organisational change, and quasi-experimental research methods. She has published more than 250 internationally refereed articles in leading journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, and Annual Review of Psychology. Her work has been cited more than 60,000 times and has influenced work health and safety policy in Australia, the UK and the USA. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology.
