E-HRM: innovation or irritation - explorative empirical study in five large companies on web-based HRM

By Huub J. M. Ruël, Tanya V. Bondarouk. European Conference on Information Systems, 2004

431 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Technological optimistic voices assume that, from a technical perspective, the IT possibilities for HRM are endless: in principal all HR processes can be supported by IT. E-HRM is the relatively new term for this IT supported HRM, especially through the use of web technology. This paper aims at demystifying e-HRM by answering the following questions: what actually is e-HRM?, what are the goals of starting with e-HRM?, what types can be distinguished? and what are the outcomes of e-HRM? Based upon the literature, an e-HRM research model is developed and, guided by this model, five organizations have been studied that have already been on the ?e-HR road? for a number of years. We conclude that the goals of e-HRM are mainly to improve HR?s administrative efficiency/to achieve cost reduction. Next to this goals, international companies seem to use the introduction of e-HRM to standardize/harmonize HR policies and processes. Further, there is a ?gap? between e-HRM in a technical sense and e-HRM in a practical sense in the five companies involved in our study. Finally, e-HRM hardly helped to improve employee competences, but resulted in cost reduction and a reduction of the administrative burden.

Subfields: Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/026411cb4990a81537a8eaee1e5f5c5844663ba1

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Citations in the corpus

Electronic HRM: four decades of research on adoption and consequences (2017, methodology): “In view of that trend Ruël et al. (2004) observed that effectively adopting e-HRM in an organization requires a change in employees’ mindsets, since it requires them to do their work differently.”
Digital human resource management: A conceptual clarification (2020, background): “This change is regularly understood as “transformational” (Bondarouk et al., 2016; Ruël et al., 2004).”
Conceptualising the future of HRM and technology research (2016, background): “It involves almost all employees (Ruël et al., 2004) and even people outside of ‘ employment ’ .”
An evidence-based review of e-HRM and strategic human resource management (2013, background): “Organizational goals for e-HRM investments include cost reduction through streamlining HRM operations [22], improved effectiveness through providing better delivery of HRM services [34] and transformation of the HRM function to a strategic business partner [20].”