Strategic HRM and e-HRM Adoption: an Empirical Study

The application of Information Technology to Human Resource Management (e-HRM) is believed to be a mature practice within organizations that facilitates strategic transformation of the HR function and keeps it business-oriented. However, a number of scholars have begun to question the appropriateness of this deterministic view of e-HRM as leading to strategic organizational outcomes, suggesting that e-HRM may better be interpreted as the result of strategic decision-making. In this paper, a contingent theoretical perspective was brought to bear on exploring factors that may determine the adoption of e-HRM, with a specific focus on strategic HRM. Logistic regression was applied to data from a sample of N=168 Italian organizations in order to test the effect of the organizational and HRM contexts on the adoption of three different kinds of e-HRM: operational, relational and transformational. The findings suggest that the decision to adopt operational and relational e-HRM is mainly affected by organizational factors and is not related to strategic HRM. However, there appears to be a greater link between strategic HRM and transformational e-HRM, given that choosing to introduce this type of e-HRM is associated with a priori emphasis on the strategic role of the HR function as well as a specific focus on external strategy and organizational repositioning. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.