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HRM in the digital age
Edited by Dr Emma Parry and Professor Stefan Strohmeier
1. Introduction - research on e-HRM types
The ongoing "electronisation" of human resource management (HRM) during the last two decades has brought a major change to the field. Commonly designated as electronic HRM (e-HRM), the phenomenon of "electronisation" refers to the planning, provision, implementation, operation and application of information technology (IT) for both networking and supporting actors in their shared performance of HRM functions ([56] Strohmeier, 2007). While there is growing knowledge on the quantitative adoption of e-HRM (e.g. [20] Florkowski and Olivas-Luján, 2006; [21] Galanaki and Panayotopoulou, 2008; [59] Strohmeier and Kabst, 2009), little is known about possible qualitative differences of e-HRM. Qualitative differences refer to the question of whether there is just one universal type or several contextual types of e-HRM. Systematic knowledge on different types of e-HRM, including the different preceding contexts and the different succeeding consequences of specific types, is particularly desirable. Such knowledge would add to our understanding of which types actually exist, in which contexts these types emerge and which consequences they produce. This offers not only interesting academic insights but also relevant practical knowledge on which type of e-HRM to adopt in which context. Based on the configurational approach, which directly aims to explain differences in contexts, configurations and consequences of organisations (e.g. [37] Meyer et al. , 1993; [41] Mintzberg, 1979; [40] Miller and Friesen, 1978), the current study thus aims to examine contexts, types and (success) consequences of e-HRM configurations.
Given the nascent state of knowledge, this study is of an exploratory nature and thus aims to generate rather than test hypotheses on different e-HRM configurations. To this end, a configurational approach to e-HRM is outlined as the foundation of the study (Section 2); the methods used for exploring contexts, types and consequences are described (Section 3); and the results of different contexts, types and consequences are presented (Section 4) and discussed (Section 5).
2. Foundations - a configurational approach to e-HRM
The configurational approach constitutes a classic perspective for researching organisational differences. Beside numerous adoptions in general management research (cf. the overviews in [15] Dess et al. , 1993; [49] Short et al. , 2008) the approach has also been...