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e-HRM Research and Practice: Facingthe Challenges Ahead

Huub Ruël and Tanya Bondarouk

Abstract The history of e-HRM research extends back about 4 decades. In thattime, researchers have provided a rich foundation for a better understanding ofissues such as e-HRM implementation, e-HRM usage, and e-HRM outcomes. Thepast decade in particular saw an impressive growth of publications, but more workis still needed because the field of the intersection of HRM and informationtechnology is dynamic: HRM strategies, policies, practices and instruments as wellas information technologies progress. In this chapter, we identify and describe thechallenges that lie ahead for e-HRM research based on five earlier publications inthe period 2009–2012. We reflect on them and modify them based on recentresearch outcomes. We conclude that, given the sizeable challenges identified,e-HRM research is far from ‘dead’; it is more alive than ever. Furthermore, thenumber of e-HRM researchers from the HRM field as well as from the IT fieldneeds to grow in order to meet the research challenges that lie ahead.

Keywords e-HRM � e-HRM research � Challenges � Information technologies �Literature review � Social media

1 Introduction

The history of e-HRM research extends back about 4 decades, but it has grownexplosively since the new millennium. It has helped the field of e-HRM to matureand provided insights and greatly increased our understanding of the intersection

H. Ruël (&)Windesheim University of Applied Science, Zwolle, The Netherlandse-mail: [email protected]

T. BondaroukUniversity of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlandse-mail: [email protected]

F. J. Martínez-López (ed.), Handbook of Strategic e-Business Management,Progress in IS, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-39747-9_26,� Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

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between information technology and human resource management. But theknowledge provided is still limited and skewed, as certain angles, perspectives andtopics have received less attention. Another aspect is the research methodologyused in e-HRM research; this is still limited, and rigour versus relevance is an issueas well.This chapter addresses the challenges that lie ahead for e-HRM research in termsof the topics and methodology. We believe this is needed in order to inspiree-HRM scholars to conduct further research. First, we will briefly define e-HRMby reflecting on our earlier definition (Bondarouk and Ruël 2009) in view of recentdevelopments in HRM as well as IT. Second, we will identify the challenges fore-HRM research that lie ahead, again reflecting on the challenges we identifiedearlier, but also analysing recently published reviews of the e-HRM literature.Third, we will describe the challenges and provide ways to address these chal-lenges. Finally, we will project the challenges into the future and describe thecurrent state of the e-HRM debate.

2 e-HRM: In Need of Revision?

e-HRM is an abbreviation standing for electronic human resource management. Itoriginates from a decade that put an ‘e’ in front of every business-related topic, butespecially in front of the word business itself. It was a decade (2000–2010) of thefirst Internet boom or, as it is sometimes called, the age of web 1.0. Therefore,business became e-business, marketing became e-marketing, supply chain man-agement became e-supply chain management, and human resource managementbecame e-HRM. The great challenge of the new leaves on the tree was to explainwhat exactly was new by adding the ‘e’ to an established label for a field ofresearch?

For e-HRM this was a basic challenge as many HRM scholars were quitesceptical about the concept of e-HRM. Was e-HRM just ‘old wine in new bottles’?What was new in comparison to earlier automation studies in personnel man-agement? What was new in comparison to office automation studies of the 1970sand 1980s? This debate was finally ‘won’ by e-HRM scholars as they managed toclaim a substantial piece of the HRM cake. This is best evidenced by the numberof special issues that have appeared over the past ten years in well-establishedHRM and IT journals (Human Resource Management, International Journal ofHuman Resource Management, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Euro-pean Journal of International Management, Human Resource ManagementReview and many others).

In 2009 the International Journal of Human Resource Management published aspecial issue on e-HRM. In the editorial of this journal, we aimed to put forward anew, all-inclusive definition of e-HRM after years of discussions on what it isexactly:

634 H. Ruël and T. Bondarouk

e-HRM is ‘‘an umbrella term covering all possible integration mechanisms and contentsbetween HRM and Information Technologies aiming at creating value within and acrossorganizations for targeted employees and management’’ (Bondarouk and Ruël 2009,p. 507).

This definition was the result of a heated discussion among e-HRM researchersrather than a consensus. The interesting question at this point in time is to reflecton this definition: does it still hold? And will it be able to cover emerging HRMand IT issues and developments?

What can be said is that the definition introduces e-HRM as an ‘umbrella term’and that it is not biased towards either HRM or IT. It has a positive slant, as itstresses creating value. Research on e-HRM throughout the years has been quitemodest, if not quite sceptical about the value created by e-HRM (Parry 2011).However, claiming that e-HRM should not aim at creating value would soundstrange. The definition does not explain what kind of value or what forms andshapes it may take. The problem with this issue is that it leaves much room forinterpretation and may ‘cover’ integration mechanisms and content that cannotreally be called e-HRM. Therefore, the suggestion is to specify value creation andextend it by aiming at making HRM processes more efficient, higher quality, and/or more invested in creating long-term opportunities.

Second, the definition formulated in 2009 still includes human resourceinformation systems (HRIS) that only target the HR department and are not meantto be implemented and used outside of it. An earlier publication claimed thate-HRM was different from HRIS, especially as e-HRM’s focus lies outside the HRdepartment. The question now is, how problematic is this? We recall that one ofthe core features of the e-movement in its early days was the opening up of dataand information resources for the public at large. In the case of e-HRM, it openedup data and information via IT-based tools and channels for the subjects of the dataand information. It needed to draw users of e-HRM into the process of co-creatingit. Therefore, integration mechanisms and content shared between HRM and ITthat is only meant to be used by HR departments do not meet that aim. Thedefinition formulated by Bondarouk and Ruël (2009) needs to be updated.

Third, and in our view the most important critique of the definition is that itaims to explain what e-HRM is as an empirical phenomenon, not as a field ofstudy. What are scholars researching when they study the empirical phenomenonthey call e-HRM? And for what reasons? We will attempt to incorporate thisaspect.

e-HRM as a field of scholarly inquiry focuses on all integration mechanismsand content shared between IT and HRM, aiming at making HRM processes moreefficient, higher quality, and/or more invested in creating long-term opportunitieswithin and across organizations for targeted employees and management outsideof the HR department. The field aims to improve the understanding of thisphenomenon, to contribute to its progress in terms of its design, its implementa-tion, its interaction with the organizational context, and its effects.

From here we turn to identifying the e-HRM research challenges.

e-HRM Research and Practice: Facing the Challenges Ahead 635

3 Identifying the e-HRM Research Challenges

e-HRM research has grown extensively over the past decade and has helped toprovide answers to questions such as whether e-HRM creates value (Bondaroukand Ruël 2013; Parry 2011), which factors influence e-HRM use (…), and howe-HRM can turn HRM into a strategic partner (Marler 2009). But 4 decades ofe-HRM have also confronted researchers with the gaps, under-researched areas,inconclusive answers, and ambitious research agendas.

In the period 2009–2012, we were involved in researching and writing fivedifferent papers that addressed the challenges for e-HRM research in the yearsahead. These papers all resulted from an observation of an omission in e-HRMresearch: respectively, the lack of a consensus definition of e-HRM and the lack ofconclusive answers to whether e-HRM reduces costs (Bondarouk and Ruël 2009),the lack of diverse perspectives in e-HRM research (Ruël et al. 2011), the lack ofinternational and cross-cultural research in e-HRM (Ruël and Bondarouk 2012),the lack of a chronological overview of e-HRM research (Bondarouk andFurtmueller 2012), and the lack of e-HRM research in multinational corporations(Van Geffen et al. 2013).

We shall discuss the main observations and conclusions of these publications.The value of this exercise is that it will provide a rich and multiperspectiveoverview of the e-HRM research challenges that lie ahead.

3.1 Former Challenges for e-HRM Research

In 2009, we wrote an editorial introduction to The International Journal of HumanResource Management special issue on e-HRM. Based on a review of the researchliterature, we concluded there were four challenges for e-HRM research (Bondaroukand Ruël 2009): (1) clarifying the strategic ambiguity of e-HRM, (2) conceptualizingrelationships between e-HRM and human capital development, (3) the e-HRM webof delivery channels and perceptions of e-HRM, and (4) measurement of valuecreation for diverse groups of users (p. 508).

The first challenge, clarifying the strategic ambiguity of e-HRM, refers to thewidespread idea that e-HRM enables HR professionals to improve their perfor-mance and ‘upgrade’ themselves to the status of business partners. In this role, HRprofessionals are assumed to act as internal consultants to senior and line managers(Hussain et al. 2007). They are also assumed to create value and improve theirstatus within their own organization by using e-HRM (Lawler and Mohrman 2003)and to support strategic decision-making based on digitized and automated per-sonnel databases (Broderick and Boudreau 1992). In contrast to these assumedbenefits for HR professionals, empirical evidence reveals a more complicatedpicture of what really happens. e-HRM is mostly used for routine administrativeHR tasks (Ball 2001) and not for strategic HR tasks in more than 50 % of the cases


(Hussain et al. 2007); it is used more for administrative goals than for analytical ordecision-making support goals (Haines and Lafleur 2008). Furthermore, it brings acertain value to organizations in terms of increased efficiency, service delivery,and standardization of goals, with some evidence of transformational impact(Parry 2011; Parry and Tyson 2011) and that appropriate usage of e-HRM and HRvalue creation are moderately linked (Ruël and Van der Kaap 2012). However, inthe latter case facilitating conditions such as support for users, high data quality,HR professionals’ technology competences, and HR policy–practices alignmentseem to have a stronger direct linkage with HR value creation than usage as such(Ruël and Van der Kaap 2012). Overall, it seems that turning e-HRM into astrategic competitive advantage is not as easy and straightforward as assumed. Thechallenge for e-HRM research is to solve this ambiguity regarding the strategic‘hopes’ and reality of e-HRM in organizations. One way forward regarding thisissue is to build more constructively on existing research. e-HRM scholars shouldadopt a coherent framework or theoretical perspective from which scholars couldcontinue step-by-step to get this issue ‘solved’. To date, this has not been the case,and e-HRM studies seem to connect with existing studies only in the discussionsection of articles and papers. New studies should start from existing frameworks,theoretical perspectives and outcomes, with the aim to reassess or improve them.

The second challenge, conceptualizing relationships between e-HRM and humancapital development, refers to the growing importance of economies outside of ‘theWest’ and the need for multinational corporations (MNCs) to attract and retaintalent. e-HRM can be a facilitator in global talent management, especially withsocial media making it easy to reach beyond borders. Bondarouk and Ruël (2013)found that the most attractive employers do not necessarily use social media such asLinkedIn and Facebook in an optimal way. The results of the quasi-experimentalresearch design revealed that the corporate websites are found to be more attractivethan the way the same companies present themselves via social media. Anotherstudy on global talent management (GTM) and the role of social networks (Ruëlet al. 2013) showed that graduate students do find social networks important formultinationals’ efforts to recruit talent, but HR managers are sceptical about the useof social networks for GTM and do not use it extensively for this purpose. Ruta(2009) presents a case study that showed that if HR portals are aligned with the HRstrategy, this does leverage intellectual capital creation and development.

Clearly, e-HRM research is facing a challenge to understand the relationshipbetween e-HRM and human capital development and talent management, espe-cially in view of the new ‘avenues’ of e-HRM such as social media. The latter issome sort of ‘bulk’ concept for all kinds of web-based and mobile device-basedcommunication and interaction channels, and it is beyond doubt that these chan-nels will develop and diversify further in the years ahead. Also on the talentmanagement side, further developments will emerge in view of changing attitudesto the work-life balance, importance of sustainability, the aging populations in theWest, changes in the very juvenile and dynamic societies in the Middle East, andthe increasing importance of multinationals from emerging economies. Luckily,


there are clear signs that e-HRM researchers have picked up on this challenge(Bondarouk and Olivas-Lujan 2013; Lyons and Marler 2011).

The third challenge, the maturation of the e-HRM web of delivery channels,reflects developments in organizations where ‘doing HR’ is no longer restricted tothe HR department and line managers but has diversified with the emergence ofexternal HR service providers, HR shared service centres, and the involvementof and the responsibilities assigned to non-managerial employees. Informationtechnology has enabled HR services to be provided relatively easily by partiesoutside the organizational boundaries. For example, HR shared service centres(HR SSCs) can deliver HR services to multiple organizations at the same time,while being located physically far away from the client organization. Withinmultinational corporations, an HR SSC may serve all its branches and subsidiariesin a geographical region. The core point of the challenge, therefore, is the multiple‘faces’ of e-HRM (face-to-face, electronic device, external party electronic HRservice delivery, and employees’ own involvement and responsibility) and theconfiguration of these ‘faces’ in order to optimize HR processes to serve anorganization’s bottom line. HR SSC research has taken off to a certain extent(Farndale et al. 2009; Meijerink et al. 2013/in press) and is producing results, butmuch more is needed to serve HR academia and the HR practice.

The fourth challenge, the measurement of value creation for diverse groups ofusers, refers to the issue of the multiple interpretations and perceptions of the valuecreated by e-HRM. e-HRM aims to serve a diverse group of users, from seniormanagement to non-managerial employees. e-HRM research has so far not beenable to come up with a clear set of measures/indicators for value creation per targetgroup. Evidence from earlier studies indicates that it is not clear where exactlyvalue is being created. Most of the studies seem to suggest that the actual usage byend users explains whether or not e-HRM creates value. A recent study by Ruëland Van der Kaap (2012) shows that besides e-HRM appropriation and frequencyof use, organizational context, or more precisely facilitating conditions such assupport from HR professionals, and HR policy-practice consistency explaine-HRM value creation significantly.

e-HRM research needs to be able to come up with a defined set of outcomemeasures per category of users. Only this will help to clear up the vagueconversation about how e-HRM is creating value. This will help future research,calm the discussion among e-HRM scholars, and increase the value of e-HRMresearch for the practice (Bondarouk et al. 2011).

3.2 An Integrative IT-Organization Perspective on e-HRM

Information technology (IT) and organizations keep on integrating in today’sworld, and there are no signs that this process is coming to an end. The impacts ofthis ongoing integration are contradictory ( Ruël et al. 2004). Results displayed bythis integration are delayering as well as relayering organizational structures,


deskilling as well as upskilling personnel, introducing more autocratic managementstyles as well as more participative management styles, and breaking down orga-nizational boundaries as well as erecting organizational boundaries (Ruël et al.2011). This observation invites a reframing of the relationship between IT andorganization, away from a relatively simple cause and effect line of reasoning,where IT is usually considered the cause of effects on the organization. A paperpublished in 2011 (Ruël et al. 2011) proposed to ‘solve’ the issue of one-waydeterminism by calling for a perspective that sees IT and organization as an‘intricate net of interrelationships where there are no exclusive one-to-relationships.The net is made up of a number of interrelated factors or phenomena that sometimesact as the cause and other times act as the consequence of the integration of ITartefacts into organizations’ (Ruël et al. 2011, p. 23).

The phenomena referred to are: automation of tasks and processes, textual-ization of information, concerns over IT costs, new forms of managerial control,compression of competitive time, hypercompetition, outsourcing, convergence ofinfo-com, organizational knowledge as competitive pressure, new forms of ITalignment, organizational change orientation, and integrating the informationsystems function. They have all been derived from the literature on IT andorganizations and are considered the major themes that emerge from or are dealtwith in the literature. The authors took these phenomena as the point of departurefor formulating a research agenda for e-HRM and human resource informationsystems (HRIS) research.

The list of questions raised is impressive, and they have so far been addressed ina limited number of studies. The question is whether all of them need an answerand what kind of audience is addressed, academics or practitioners or both? Thisbrings in the question of rigor versus relevance. In the field of IT, a group ofscholars made a plea for more design science-oriented research. They feel this willincrease the relevance of IT research dramatically. A similar plea has been madeby Strohmeier (2012): the relevance of e-HRM research up to now has not beenimpressive in his view. And integrative perspective on IT and organization couldbe useful to turn e-HRM research into more ‘relevant’ directions as this per-spective aims to shift from a predominantly deterministic perspective to focusmore on processes. Research with a process focus investigates ‘mechanisms’regarding how phenomena occur. This may very likely bring more insightfulresearch findings for practitioners (Tables 1, 2).

A critique can also be raised on this type of research: research findings thatprovide insights into how phenomena occur often produce results that may not bedirectly transferable to other situations, as they are mostly based on single casestudies (Eisenhardt 1989). Adding to this critique is the comment that perspectivesthat focus on processes usually reveal ‘mechanisms’, but it is still hard to turn thisinto knowledge of how to act.

Nevertheless, a more process-oriented stream of research, based on an inte-grative research lens, would definitely help the e-HRM field to accumulateknowledge and provide valuable insights for e-HRM theory and practice.


Table 1 A summary of research questions emerging from an integrated IT-organizationperspective

Phenomena Research questions for e-HRM/HRIS resulting from thisphenomena

The automation of tasks andprocesses and HRIS

• How do employees and line managers respond to thistransfer of HR-related activities?

• How do organizations cope with the new division of HR-related tasks between employees themselves, linemanagers, IS department, and HR staff?

The costs of IT: expansion andcontrol

• To what extent are HRIS implementations a consequenceof a period of expansion?

• What happens to HRIS implementations in periods ofcontrol?

• Who are the main sponsors of HRIS investments andhow do different types of sponsors affect HRISimplementation?

• How does HRIS use affect productivity or the return oninvestment of HRIS?

New forms of managerial control • How do managers use the new possibilities formanagerial control?

• How can an organizational culture be matched withspecific control habits and the control mechanisms andtool available?

• What kind of coping strategies do subordinates employwith HRIS-based managerial tools?

• To what extent do organizations become more self-awarethrough using more and more HRIS tools?

Compression of competitive time • To what extent do HRISs contribute to organizationalflexibility?

• How can HRISs facilitate a flexible business strategy?• How can HRISs be used to create a competitive

advantage?• How is competence-based management being impacted

by HRISs?Outsourcing • What are the consequences of outsourcing for HRIS

effectiveness?• To what extent do managers and employees trust

outsourced HR services?• How can internal, outsourced HR services and the

deployment of HRIS applications be balanced?Convergence of info-com • How does convergence of HRISs impact HR

professionals’ roles and activities?• What organizational needs trigger further convergence of

IT for HR purposes?• How does the use of HRISs by managers and employees

influence convergence of HRISs?

(continued)


Table 1 (continued)

Phenomena Research questions for e-HRM/HRIS resulting from thisphenomena

Organizational knowledge as acompetitive pressure

• How can HRISs support organizational knowledgedevelopment, sharing, and maintenance?

• What are the mechanisms through which HRISs facilitateor inhibit organizational knowledge development?

• How do employees integrate HRIS-supported strategicalignment?

What roles should HR professionals, employees, andmanagers fulfil in an HRIS-supported alignedcompany?

Organizational change orientation • What are the conditions for successful HRIS-supportedorganizational change?

• How can different types of organizational change besupported with HRISs?

• How can HRISs help to overcome resistance toorganizational change?

Integration of the IT function withother business functions

• How can the IT function be successfully integrated withthe HR function?

• Which HR roles should IT professionals understand?• Which IT roles should HR professionals understand?• How can IT and HR professionals communicate

effectively in order to design new HRISfunctionalities?

Table 2 e-HRM implementation factors and consequences 1970–2010 (Bondarouk andFurtmueller 2012)

Implementation

Technology factors Organizational factors People factors

Current ITarchitecture

Demographics (age, size, sector)organ knowledge and skills

Communication qualities

Digitalizing HR data Organizational policies and practices Employee demographicsTechnology project

managementProject management Employee and management attitudes

(support and commitment)Resources Employee and management involvement

Employee and management skills versustraining needs

Organizational culture and leadershipPsychological factors

Consequences

Operational consequences Relational consequences Transformational consequences

HR cost savings HR attitude management HR globalizationHR efficiency HR communications HR knowledge managementHR effectiveness HR relationship management

HR status HR planningHR service improvements HR strategic change management


3.3 e-HRM in a Cross-National Perspective

With the growing importance of the multinational corporation during the 1990sand 2000s and the realisation that this type of organization was among the earlyadopters of e-HRM, the need for a cross-border and cross-cultural perspective andunderstanding of e-HRM has grown. But as Ruël and Bondarouk (2012) observed,the amount of e-HRM research providing such a perspective and understanding isvery low. Until 2010 (results of our counts in the 2011 and 2012 papers), onlyseven studies on e-HRM with cross-continental data had been published, fivestudies on e-HRM with cross-national data but within one continent, two studieson e-HRM with cross-national data but within one multinational company, and 15studies on e-HRM focusing on a specific national context, but in a non-compar-ative manner.

These observations confront e-HRM researchers with the challenge to fill thisgap. But what exactly is needed? How can this gap be closed? Especially in timeswhen the economic role of the West is diminishing and the role of countries suchas Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia is rising significantly, this challengebecomes more urgent. Dominant e-HRM systems and applications have a Westernorigin and therefore may implicitly and explicitly ‘promote’ or reinforce Westernbusiness values and practices.

What is needed is more knowledge on how e-HRM technology works out indifferent national as well as cultural contexts and why? Questions like to whatextent does e-HRM technology push HR strategies, policies and practices toconverge? How does this work? And how can it be explained? To what extent ise-HRM technology culturally biased? Can it help to develop as well as to advancetheories on the relationship between HR, IT and organization? And can it be usefulfor multinational corporations to guide their actions when rolling out new e-HRMsystems and applications and to explain why earlier roll-outs worked out differ-ently than expected, or even failed completely? Human resource managementkeeps on advancing, as does technology, and all of this during a global economicpower shift to the East. Therefore, there is a continuous need for knowledge andinsights.

For theorists as well as for practitioners, it is of interest to be able to understandwhy it is complicated for HR practices supported by information technologies toproduce the targeted results in multinational and multicultural settings. The debateon standardisation–localisation may provide a useful lens for the area of organi-sation and management practices (e.g. Porter 1986; Prahalad and Doz 1987). Thisdebate concentrates on the company or meso-level, while a closely linked debateon convergence-divergence is more focused on the macro-level (Pudelko andHarzing 2007). Standardisation–localisation deals with the questions of to whatextent subsidiaries of multinational companies are behaving as local firms(localisation) versus to what extent their practices are similar to those of theheadquarters (standardisation) (Rosenzweig and Nohria 1994). HRM studies areinvolved in this debate because they deal with the management of people and are


therefore considered least likely to converge across countries. MNCs seem morelikely to localise practices than to export country-of-origin practices (Pudelko andHarzing 2007; Leat and El-Kot 2007).

The literature mentions several factors that determine the degree of stan-dardisation. Prahalad and Doz (1987) mention seven pressures for standardisation,like high technological intensity, the presence of multinational competitors, andcost reduction. Other factors which determine the degree of standardisation are therelationship between the headquarters and the subsidiary, organisational culture,authority structures, market characteristics, and work norms (Parry et al. 2008).Factors that may pressure for localization of HRM practices include unions, labourmarket, legal and political context (Brewster 1995; Ngo et al. 1998).

Studies on e-HRM standardization and localization do not exist except forconceptual work by Ruël and Bondarouk (2012). The conceptual framework(Fig. 1) presented in this study is based on empirical semi-structured interviewdata with four MNCs in Lebanon. The e-HRM phenomenon consists of four stages(projected as a cycle) representing four questions: stage one—what kind of HRMapproach is dominant in an organization? stage two—what are the goals of e-HRMin an organization within the context of the overall HRM approach? stage three—what type of e-HRM results from the goals? stage four—what kind of e-HRMconsequences does an organization want to see emerge?

Fig. 1 Conceptual framework for e-HRM in a multinational context (Ruël and Bondarouk 2012)


Based on the pilot study data, we conclude that standardization forces (driven bybusiness ideology influences) tend to be dominant in stages one and two. Locali-zation forces tend to become apparent in stages three and four (driven by socio-cultural influences). In more concrete terms, the conceptual framework hypothe-sizes that e-HRM in different national or cultural contexts will show standardizationtendencies during stage one (HRM approach) and stage two (e-HRM goals).Localization tendencies will appear during stage three (e-HRM types) and stagefour (e-HRM consequences). As a result, MNCs may show similarities all aroundthe world in the wording of their HRM approach and the formulation and choice ofe-HRM goals (driven by capitalist business ideology) but may differ in what their e-HRM looks like (e-HRM types) and what the result of e-HRM usage looks like (e-HRM consequences) (driven by local socio-cultural values).

But this is just a starting point for research on international e-HRM and e-HRMin MNCs. The challenges that lie ahead for e-HRM research and practice aremanifold. As propose, their conceptual framework can be used for different typesof research approaches. Quantitative research designs can shed more light on theextent to which standardization and localization tendencies do influence the dif-ferent e-HRM stages; qualitative research designs can provide insights into howthese tendencies influence the different e-HRM stages.

Another challenge is to add theoretical lenses, such as political, behavioural,economic, and cultural ones. Each of these lenses brings its own specific set ofresearch questions. A political lens will question the role of power and how it isexercised in e-HRM projects and roll outs, and how power plays a role in thestandardization and localization of e-HRM. A behavioural lens will focus on therole of individual actions and interpersonal interactions, an economic lens willfocus on quantifying the costs and benefits of standardization and localization ofe-HRM, and a cultural lens helps to clarify how the cultural backgrounds of actorsinvolved in e-HRM projects play a role in shaping e-HRM.

Finally, comparative studies on e-HRM are needed, studies that put e-HRMgoals, types, and outcomes in different national and cultural contexts side by side.From such studies researchers and practitioners can learn how context and e-HRM‘content’ influence each other.

3.4 e-HRM Research: A Chronological Perspective

e-HRM research has a history extending back about 4 decades, starting more orless with a publication from 1977. Bondarouk and Furtmueller (2012) conducted astructured literature review with the aim to provide a chronological overview ofhow e-HRM research started off and progressed over the years. The review revealstwo streams of literature, one focussing on factors that should be considered whenimplementing e-HRM technology and another studying the consequences ofe-HRM systems. The first stream is dominated by IT-oriented scholars, the secondone by organizational and HRM scholars.


The ‘implementation factors’ that have been included in e-HRM studies overthe past 40 years fall into three categories: technological, organizational, andpeople factors. One of the major conclusions in e-HRM research is that aneffective technical implementation of e-HRM is not necessarily linked to organi-zational e-HRM effectiveness (Bondarouk and Furtmueller 2012). Acceptance ofe-HRM applications, systems and technologies by end-users, in most casesemployees and managers, is the crucial link between the technical implementationof e-HRM and its organizational effectiveness.

A number of observations arise when reviewing 40 years of e-HRM research.New, more specific e-HRM goals have surfaced, such as improved HR serviceprovision and the strategic reorientation of HR departments (see Marler 2009). Ithas also become clear that e-HRM can simplify, enrich, steer and support, shortenand speed up the process of achieving goals for organizations and individual end-users (Bondarouk and Furtmueller 2012). But the way e-HRM is introduced andimplemented in organizations is crucial for this process to materialize. Researchhas not so far found the one single factor that can explain successful e-HRMimplementation, as Bondarouk and Furtmueller’s review concludes. However,people factors such as leadership, trust, change management, and communicationhave been shown to be the most relevant ones for e-HRM success.

A chronological overview of 40 years of e-HRM research can clearly pinpointthe challenges for e-HRM research and practice that lie ahead. Given theincreasing complexity in e-HRM theory and practice, a ‘multi-functional’ e-HRMapproach is needed. The factors and consequences identified in e-HRM researchhave to be studied for separate functional HRM areas, as the existing findings canhardly be applied directly to individual e-HRM applications. In most researche-HRM is considered from an ‘all-inclusive’ perspective, not specifying applica-tions as such.

Another challenge surfacing from the chronological review of the e-HRM lit-erature is the lack of focus on how success factors and barriers support or constrainthe processes and activities that were supposed to benefit from an e-HRM appli-cation. To solve this issue, more process-oriented research is needed, studies thatfocus on more than the extent to which certain factors play a role in e-HRMimplementation success and certain consequences occur because of e-HRM usage.Future e-HRM research needs to ‘dig’ into the processes and investigate howactivities, decisions, and behaviours are related to each other and impact eachother. This may also help to solve the relevance gap of e-HRM research that issometimes mentioned (e.g. Strohmeier 2007). More in-depth studies may result ininsights that are more practically relevant.

A third challenge stressed by Bondarouk and Furtmueller is that e-HRMresearch needs to become more precise. A concept such as implementation iscomplex and consists of different stages in practice. Research should pay attentionto this in order to make research findings more useful and again more practicallyrelevant.

A fourth challenge is the almost sheer absence of environmental and moder-ating factors in e-HRM studies. Organizational characteristics such as size and


industry, and end-user characteristics such as age and gender, are hardly taken intoaccount. Nor are factors that ‘surround’ e-HRM implementation processes, such asHRM strategies and practices. These factors bring more clarity to the e-HRM fieldand provide useful insights for theory and practice. A recent exception to the lackof research including environmental factors is the study by Ruël and Van der Kaap(2012).

Finally, the concept of e-HRM effectiveness is multi-dimensional and can bemeasured at different levels: organizational, team, and individual. This needs tobe addressed in future e-HRM research. Perhaps more uniformity would be helpfulas it makes the consequences more comparable and in this way provides betterinsights.

3.5 e-HRM in Multinational Corporations: Lessons to beLearned from IT in MNC Research

Although e-HRM research extends back 40 years, most studies have been pub-lished since the year 2000. It is a relatively young field and has drawn from theIT/IS discipline and from the HR discipline in terms of theoretical and conceptualinputs. But researchers have been selective and have overlooked large parts ofwhat is available in the HR discipline as well as in the IT/IS discipline. Especiallythe latter still has a lot to offer to e-HRM research. Van Geffen et al. (2013)identified this ‘underutilization’ of the IT/IS literature as a source of inputs fore-HRM in a multinational and multicultural setting. They conducted a systematicliterature review using the terms ‘information systems’ (and its alternatives) andmultinational corporation (and its alternatives) and searched academic databases.Additionally, the top 10 journals in the IS field were checked (using the JournalCitation Report 2011). All abstracts of articles published in the period 2006–2011(a total of 225) found from the search were read and analysed by three researchersindependently. Articles needed to focus on IS in a multinational corporation.Benchmark studies were excluded, as were unpublished studies and Master/PhDtheses. The final number of articles that were included was 53. The analysis led tothe construction of a framework (Fig. 2).

The review resulted in a number of interesting observations. The IS literatureis quite rich in studies on IS in multinational corporations that focus on pre-implementation (system selection, IS characteristics, IS development methodolo-gies and issues, alignment issues and resource availability), implementation(preparation, adaptation, and integration), and post-implementation (IS adoptionand IS results). Contextual (environmental) factors are also addressed in at least 10publications. The e-HRM literature, on the other hand, contains only a few studiesdealing with e-HRM in MNCs, and only covering topics such as motivation fore-HRM implementation, the alignment of e-HRM, integration of e-HRM, ande-HRM adoption and e-HRM results. The total number of e-HRM in MNCs


studies is close to 10. This leaves us with the clear conclusion that e-HRM researchreally should draw from the IS literature when it comes to research on e-HRM in amultinational corporation and multicultural setting.

The IS literature has much to offer to the e-HRM research community ande-HRM in practice. Of course, e-HRM is not analogous to IS, something that wekeep on stressing. However, the IS research community has dealt with similarchallenges in the past to those that the e-HRM community is facing.

4 Conclusion and Reflection

This chapter presents a broad, rich and in-depth overview of the challenges fore-HRM research and practice. It is too easy to conclude that the previous sectionshave clearly shown that there are many challenges. There is much more to say.First of all, e-HRM research is far from ‘dead’, it is actually more alive than ever,and it is also more in need than ever. HR without technology is hard to imaginenowadays, and the future will only be more conceptually and empirically chal-lenging, with new HRM developments together with new technological progress.The relationship between HRM and technology will get even closer in the future.

Fig. 2 Analytical framework with IS in multinational corporations studies (Van Geffen et al.2013)


Researchers and practitioners need to be aware of this and to try to understand thiscloser relationship as a matter of urgency.

Practitioners may sometimes be reluctant to admit that they need e-HRMresearch as their organizations already have e-HRM up and running. However, thereality is that due to a lack of conceptual and theoretical understanding as well as alack of knowledge from empirical e-HRM studies, practitioners very often do notidentify problems or options for improvement or innovation. Their reality hasbecome the standard.

e-HRM researchers may sometimes be reluctant to admit that they lack in-depthknowledge of the complexities of e-HRM projects. As a result, they may notaddress the most relevant research questions in the eyes of practitioners. e-HRMresearch needs open-minded, curious practitioners and practice-oriented e-HRMresearchers.

Given this sizeable challenge, does it mean that e-HRM research needs moree-HRM researchers? Our answer to this question is ‘yes’, too few HRMresearchers have included the technology component in their research questions,whether social media, enterprise resource planning systems, HR channel delivery,or ‘just’ an HR application. For example, for strategic human resource manage-ment implementation or strategic global talent management implementation, thequestion of how technology can facilitate, moderate, or inhibit this is inevitable.Any research project in this area needs to address the role of technology either as achannel and/or as a content provider.

But too few IT researchers and practitioners have paid attention to humanresource management as a functional management area. Human resource man-agement is different from financial management as HRM targets each organizationmember. In other words, HRM is a key leadership competence; as a strategy and asa practice, HRM is the steering wheel for the human side of an organization. Usingtechnology as a channel, a content provider or a driver for change, HRM istherefore something that involves every organization member.

More IT researchers and practitioners involved in developing or implementingsystems and applications related to or involving HRM are needed for e-HRMresearch. They possess the knowledge and understanding of the technologicalpotential of systems, which is essential for designing and customizing applications.Together with HRM researchers and practitioners, they can contribute to providingthe best possible e-HRM solutions.


Appendix

An integrative IT-organization perspective on e-HRM with recent studies

Phenomena Research questions for e-HRM/HRISresulting from this phenomena

Recent research dealingwith this

The automation of tasksand processes andHRIS

• How do employees and line managersrespond to this transfer of HR-related activities?

Ruël et al. (2004)Broderick and Boudreau

(1991)• How do organizations cope with the

new division of HR-related tasksbetween employees themselves, linemanagers, IS department, and HRstaff?

Heikkilä and Smale (2011),Voermans and VanVeldhoven (2007)

The costs of IT:expansion andcontrol

• To what extent are HRISimplementations a consequence of aperiod of expansion?

Buckley et al. (2004)

• What happens to HRISimplementations in periods ofcontrol?

• Who are the main sponsors of HRISinvestments and how do differenttypes of sponsors affect HRISimplementation?

• How does HRIS use affectproductivity or the return oninvestment of HRISs?

New forms ofmanagerial control

• How do managers use the newpossibilities for managerial control?

Beulen (2009), Agarwalet al. (2006)

• How can an organizational culture bematched with specific control habitsand the control mechanisms and toolavailable?

• What kind of coping strategies dosubordinates employ with HRIS-based managerial tools?

• To what extent are organizations moreself-aware by using more and moreHRIS tools?

Compression ofcompetitive time

• To what extent do HRISs contribute toorganizational flexibility?

Withers and Ebrahimpour(2000), Kovach et al.(2002)• How can HRISs facilitate a flexible

business strategy?• How can HRISs be used to create a

competitive advantage?• How is competence-based

management being impacted byHRISs?

(continued)


(continued)

Phenomena Research questions for e-HRM/HRISresulting from this phenomena

Recent research dealingwith this

Outsourcing • What are the consequences ofoutsourcing for HRIS effectiveness?

Dibbern et al. (2004)

• To what extent do managers andemployees trust outsourced HRservices?

• How can internal, outsourced HRservices and the deployment ofHRIS applications be balanced?

Convergence of info-com

• How does convergence of HRISsimpact HR professionals’ roles andactivities?

Bell et al. (2006)Martinsons and Chong

(1999)• What organizational needs trigger

further convergence of IT for HRpurposes?

• How does the use of HRISs bymanagers and employees influenceconvergence of HRISs?

Organizationalknowledge as acompetitive pressure

• How can HRISs supportorganizational knowledgedevelopment, sharing, andmaintenance?

Ruta (2009), Hustad andMunkvold (2005)

• What are the mechanisms throughwhich HRISs facilitate or inhibitorganizational knowledgedevelopment?

• How do employees integrate HRIS-supported strategic alignment?

• What roles should HR professionals,employees, and managers fulfil in anHRIS-supported aligned company?

Organizational changeorientation

• What are the conditions for successfulHRIS-supported organizationalchange?

Svoboda and Schröder(2001), Wilson-Everedand Härtel (2009)

• How can different types oforganizational change be supportedwith HRISs?

• How can HRISs help to overcomeresistance to organizational change?

Integration of the ITfunction with otherbusiness functions

• How can the IT function besuccessfully integrated with the HRfunction?

Tansley and Newell (2007)

• Which HR roles should ITprofessionals understand?

• Which IT roles should HRprofessionals understand?

• How can IT and HR professionalscommunicate effectively in order todesign new HRIS functionalities?


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