Information technology and the autonomy–control du

Authors: Ali Tafti Sunil Mithas M S Krishnan

Publish Date: 2007/03/06

Volume: 8, Issue: 2, Pages: 147-166

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Abstract

We examine the relationship between firms’ human resources HR practices and their information technology IT practices focusing on the dichotomy between autonomy and control We define facilitating HR practices as those that exhibit the following characteristics worker autonomy connectedness learning valuing individuals trust and flexibility in business processes We then characterize facilitating IT practices which are practices that facilitate employee collaboration autonomy and wider access to information We contrast these categories of practice to traditional HR and monitoring IT respectively Drawing from theories of complementarities and configuration we propose that alignment between HR and IT strategies originates at the level of individual practices We consider the effects of this alignment on worker performance We then ground our discussion in exploratory empirical and qualitative resultsWe thank Special Issue coeditors Chris Forman Hemant Bhargava Robert Kauffman and D J Wu the Associate Editor and two anonymous referees for their comments to improve this paper We also thank Nigel Melville and seminar participants at Ross School of Business Financial support was provided in part by NSF IGERT grant no 0114368 the RH Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and the Michael R and Mary Kay Hallman fellowship at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business

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