There is a rich seam of literature which addresses 'people and technology' and in broad terms the themes which arise are set out diagrammatically in Figure 1. The appearance or promise of liberation, empowerment and decentralisation is shown with its contrast of control, domination and centralization.
Different forms of technology and technological change have been at the heart of many of the issues concerning the management of people and the work of human resource professionals for many years. In more recent times, however, these issues emanate from the role of newer technologies in transforming societies, transforming economic progress and in how we work in such societies. Excellent overviews on different aspects of the role of information and communication technologies (ICT), the 'new' economy. This has resulted in a renewed interest in the relationship between these new technologies and the management of people.
These more macro and intellectual concerns have been accompanied by the actual influence of technologies on the practice of human resource management. For example,technology as a transforming force, especially in the e-enablement of HR and its impact on the creation and transfer of knowledge.
As we have explained in earlier chapters, signs have been mounting for some time that previously accepted concepts of organisation and strategy have come to an end. The fundamentally Newtonian paradigm of organisations as machines and strategy by numbers has given way to structural change that shifts the emphasis from physical inputs and outputs to intangible ones such as knowledge, learning, creativity and initiative. The old paradigm of top-down control and hierarchical organisation appears to have exhausted its capacity to generate innovative responses to turbulent business conditions and intensifying global competition — indeed, far from fostering innovation, many managers feel it is holding them back.
The preliminary analysis of the literature — old and new — helps to inform the debate about the impact of, and relationship between, new technologies and people management. It suggests that these technologies are a moving target, which is likely to pose new problems and new contexts for organisations, especially as they move into newer stages of technological development.
With the new knowledge-based technologies advancing at a rapid pace, people management becomes an important mechanism for challenging the 'forces of conservatism', whether found in management or the workforce, and hence enabling organisations to more rapidly translate investments into better performance. This implies that in a knowledge-based economy, organisations certainly need to invest more in research and development, technology and capital equipment and skills, but these are not sufficient in themselves to make a step change in performance. Therefore to work, they need to be knit together in a truly people-centred business model, working as a system to learn and improve the offering to customers.
How the business models of organisations exert an array of competing pressures on HR functions, which create ambiguities and tensions in what it delivers, how it delivers, how effectively it delivers and to whom it delivers.
To deliver HR strategy, organisations typically respond to the competing pressures with a mix of re-organisation of the HR function itself and new ICT approaches. The re-organisation of the HR function involves new HR service delivery approaches models, often based on a tri-partite model of shared services, centres of excellence and strategic or business partnering along the lines with outsourcing and, in some cases, off-shoring of key services, especially shared service centres. The introduction of ICT, often in combination with new HR delivery models can then rationalise or transform HR's internal operations.
It should be emphasised at the outset that these organisational, process re-engineering and ICT solutions are interdependent. Without progressively sophisticated ICT, new HR delivery models would not be as effective: indeed it is the increased reach and richness of technology-enabled information and organisational learning that have facilitated simultaneous centralisation and delegation of decision-making in HR, cited by academics, observers and practitioners as the single most important claimed distinctive capability of new HR delivery models. One of the logical consequences of these developments is the potential 'virtualisation' or, at least, significant 'leaning' of HR which results from simultaneously reducing the numbers of specialists required to deliver HR services internally while improving the quality of these same services and developing new HR business models.
The introduction of technology, therefore, offers the potential to transform HR's role. It promises to do this by:
- increasing the HR function's influence as consultants focused on the needs of managers and employees;
- enabling new flexible and responsive methods of delivering HR services, such as self-service via the Internet or Intranet;
- expanding HR's reach as the experts of the organisation's people processes and the developers of value propositions for different employee groups.
Thus, the 'bandwagon' of technology-enabled HR solutions seems to be growing at a rapid rate driven by some evidence of promising practices and positive evaluations of technology and outsourcing projects. However, this bandwagon in support of technology adoption is also fuelled by some 'dangerous half-truths' or 'total nonsense'.
To address the various challenges set out earlier, we now offer advice, supported by theoretical frameworks which are based on recent research and case study evidence. Our collective experience gained through working with a variety of companies to transform their HR functions through the design and implementation of technology shows that technology investments are frequently under-used and do not release the full benefit to the organisations concerned.
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