Relationship between the use of Information Technology (IT) and performances of Human Resources Management (HRM)

Abstract

Purpose. Increasing environmental challenges have forced organizations turn to two facilitators to raise competitive edges: the Human Resources Management (HRM), and the Information Technology (IT). Though there are developmental parallels between these two facilitators, misalignments exit as well. With this study, the researcher intends to examine and establish the relationship between the use of IT and the performances of the Human Resources Management (HRM).

Design/methodology/approach. The research design is descriptive and correlation research using a double-sided single sheet of questionnaire with 66 numerical values to be collected from subjects. "The use of IT" should be seen as a combined effect of people, process, policy and hardware (Walker, 1982), and is, thus, defined in this research by the researcher as nine IT-related features in three sub-groups: organizational readiness (including support of the use of IT from top management, organization's investment and budget on the use of IT, quality of IT personnel), organization's eHR system (including degree of automation of eHR system, degree of integration of eHR system, and degree of flexibility of eHR system), and HRM practitioners' IT readiness (including HRM personnel's access to the eHR hardware/software available on the market, HRM personnel's acceptance/support of the use of IT, and HRM personnel's IT knowledge). The HRM performances should be measured in two dimensions: the performances at functional-task level at more strategic organizational performance level (Huselid, Jackson & Schuler,1997; Becker, Huselid, & Ulrich, 2001). The researcher, thus, adopts the model by Gómez-Mejía, Balkin and Cardy (2002) as the job content of the HRM activities at its functional performances level, which includes nine HRM functional tasks: work flows, staffing, employee separation, performance appraisal, training and development, compensation and benefits, employee relations, employee rights, and international management. More over, the researcher adopts the three HRM traditional core values as criterion on testing the HRM functional performances: productivity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Further, researcher defines six dimension as organizational performances: stakeholders' satisfaction, organizational growth, organizational communication, team collaboration, strategic performances, and Knowledge Management (KM). Researcher empirically investigated the relationships between the use of IT and the HRM's nine functional tasks on productivity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, and the relationships between the use of IT and the organizational performances. In addition, researcher examined how the use of IT could help HRM practitioners transform their resources (i.e. time, energy) from doing the functional tasks to planning and executing the more strategic organizational challenges (termed as the "HRM Transformation Gap"). The researcher took the convenience sample as her sampling methodology, and selected active members of the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) who attended SHRM-hosted conferences from mid September 2007 to last October in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington D.C. The subjects were not exclusively at the executive positions, but at all levels of HRM division with various kinds of HRM responsibilities from both private and public sectors. 740 responses were collected and among which was 347 good and usable responses with no missing value. The data then was analyzed with SPSS 15.0 full version.

Findings. Participating HRM practitioners reported that the use of IT significantly affected their HRM functional performances in terms of productivity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness; in addition, the IT implementation gap (the difference between the organization's goals for its use of IT and organization's actual performance of the use of IT) significantly affected the HRM's functional performances, the organizational performances, and the organizational performance gap (the difference between the organization's performances goals and its actual organizational performances). However, the participating HRM practitioners did report that the use of IT, contrary to the popular assumption, could "free" HRM practitioners from their functional work, so they can devote more of their resources to the more strategic work at the organizational performances level.