HUMAN RESOURCE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

HUMAN RESOURCE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Basics, Applications, and Future Directions

Michael J Kavanagh

&

Mohan Thite

Sage Publications   2009

Pp 469     Rs 495

Time was when ‘people management’ (by whatever name called) referred to little more than record keeping. At a stage when the field was yet green, Drucker (1954) had found reason to remark that the constant worry of all personnel administrators is their inability to prove that they are making a contribution to the enterprise. The evolution from that non-descript, though not always humble, status to the present day Strategic Human Resources has been long and arduous. Drucker later coined the term Knowledge Worker in Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959) and expanded the scope of the HR Manager beyond the obvious, bringing in the need to create organisations that nurture Learning, the need to tap tacit knowledge, and the need to institutionalise the process of matching the right person for the right job through appropriate training and reward systems. He also opened the floodgates for a whole genre of management literature encompassing the Knowledge Worker, Knowledge Economy, Knowledge Management …

Mohan Thite the co-author of the book under review, published Managing People in the New Economy: Targeted HR Practices That Persuade People to Unlock Their Knowledge Power (2004) acutely conscious of the knowledge worker and the need for the human relations professional to reinvent himself… and stressed the need for HRM to ensure that its theoretical base is integrated into the organization which will in turn result in HRM being integrated into corporate strategies and line managers’ functions and decisions. Thite, Senior Lecturer at Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, has also recently co-edited The Next Available Operator: Managing Human Resources in the Indian Business Process Outsourcing Industry (February 2009) along with Bob Russell also of Griffith Business School, Australia. They present eleven papers examining HRM in business process outsourcing (i.e. call centers) in India and includes views of industry practitioners and comparative studies of call centres in various countries.

The present book written by him along with Michael J Kavanagh, Professor Emeritus of Management at the State University of New York at Albany, highlights the advancements in Human Resource Information Systems. The basic philosophy in this book, in the words of the authors, is that the integration or harmonization of technology with people management in an HRIS will create distinct competitive advantage. A tiny revelation of Thite’s subconscious acceptance of Drucker’s statement of 1954!

There is hardly any debate on the importance of the management of employee information in maximizing the use of human resources in an organisation and maintaining competitiveness in its market. What is impressive about this book, however, is that it presents a cogent account of the best of two distinct disciplines: HRM and IT. The first purpose of this book, say the authors, is to provide information on the development, implementation and maintenance of a Human Resource Information System (HRIS); the second purpose being to demonstrate how an HRIS can be used in HRM programmes.

The book is divided into five parts. Part I is an introduction to the HRM and HRIS – which covers the evolution of HRM from its pre-World War I stages to HRM and Strategic HRM followed by a brief introduction to the concepts of databases and computer applications. The second part deals with determining of HRIS needs. This covers long- and short-range planning, system design, and cost considerations. Part III covers the implementation of HRIS – an area which could perhaps be called one of the major obstacles in the use of HRIS: “while technical challenges will always remain in implementing complex HRIS, the major challenge to successful implementation is more behavioral than technical.” The authors therefore felt the need to devote a chapter largely to the management of change. Part IV describes HRIS applications, which covers important areas such as Talent Management, HR planning, recruitment and selection “in the internet context”, training and development. Part V is entitled: Special Topics in HRIS, in two chapters.  The first chapter Information Security and Privacy in HRIS covers among other things the Legal Requirements for Information Security and The Role of HR in Information Security. The last chapter appears under the heading: The Future of HRIS: Emerging Trends in HRM and IT and ends on a somber note. The student of HRIS is cautioned that he/she must never forget the human issues in developing and implementing an HRIS. In sum, say the authors, technology is extremely important in the filed of HRIS, but people are simply more important. People are simply important.