Hubertus Johannes Maria Ruel

E-HRM: Innovation or Irritation. An Explorative Empirical Study in Five Large Companies on Web-based HRM

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.

The contribution of e-HRM to HRM effectiveness. Results from a quantitative study in a Dutch Ministry.

Purpose – Both for-profit and not-for-profit organisations have been replacing face-to-face HRM activities with web-based HRM tools, e-HRM for short, for employees and managers since the 1990s. This paper aims to look at whether this is of benefit to an organisation. n nDesign/methodology/approach – The study was conducted in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in The Netherlands, where e-HRM in the form of employee self-service applications was introduced. n nFindings – The study shows that individual assessment of e-HRM applications influences HRM technical and strategic effectiveness. This is especially so in the perceived quality of the content and the structure of e-HRM applications which have a significant and positive effect on technical and strategic HRM effectiveness. n nResearch limitations/implications – It is difficult to form generalizations from the research into only one company. n nPractical implications – The basic expectations are that using e-HRM will decrease costs, will improve the HR service level and will give the HR department space to become a strategic partner. This study investigates whether this is the case. n nOriginality/value – The area on which this study concentrates has not had extensive academic research conducted into it

Adopting new IT by learning in groups: results of discourse analysis

A new HR system was introduced into a Dutch hospital. The system implied collaborative work among its users. The project planning seemed to be reasonably straightforward: the systems introduction was intended to take place evolutionarily, including pilots in different departments and appropriate feedback. After some time, the system was successfully adopted by one group of users, but failed with another. We conceptualize the implementation process of groupware as a group learning to frame the adoption the system, and analyze the qualitative data collected by means of discourse analyses carried out during the case study. We found that in the user-group with strong group learning, adoption of the system occurred effectively and on time. In another user-group with rather weak group learning, the use of the system was blocked after a short time. The results confirmed our assumption about the importance of group learning processes in the implementation of groupware.