Does e-HRM Lead To Better HRM Service?: The International Journal of Human Resource Management

The International Journal of Human Resource
Management
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Does e-HRM lead to better HRM service?
Tanya Bondarouk, Rainer Harms & David Lepak
To cite this article: Tanya Bondarouk, Rainer Harms & David Lepak (2015): Does e-HRM lead
to better HRM service?, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, DOI:
10.1080/09585192.2015.1118139
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2015.1118139
Published online: 24 Dec 2015.
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Download by: [Universiteit Twente] Date: 13 January 2016, At: 23:59

The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2015.1118139
Does e-HRM lead to better HRM service?

Tanya Bondarouka, Rainer Harmsb and David Lepakc
a
Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, HRM Department, University of Twente,
Enschede, The Netherlands; bFaculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, NIKOS
Department, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands; cSchool of Management and Labor
Relations, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Downloaded by [Universiteit Twente] at 23:59 13 January 2016
Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) is Adaptive Structuration

often assumed to increase HRM service quality. This paper Theory; e-HRM; e-HRM
appropriation; e-HRM use;
empirically examines the relationship between e-HRM and
HRM service quality
HRM service quality and addresses two calls from recent
e-HRM studies, namely to highlight (i) the importance of the
interplay between technological and organizational aspects
and (ii) the finding that improved HRM service quality is a
consequence of e-HRM implementation. We argue that the
key drivers of HRM service quality are the strengths both of
HRM and of e-HRM. The relationship may be mediated by the
frequency of e-HRM usage. In addition, building on Adaptive
Structuration Theory, the degree to which mediation
occurs may differ within regimes of high and low e-HRM
appropriation. We use moderated mediation analysis on a
sample of 140 employees of an administration unit to shed
light on the drivers of HRM service quality. While we identify
strong positive direct effects of HRM strength and of e-HRM
strength, we fail to uncover either mediation or contingent
mediation effects. The study contributes to e-HRM research
by identifying the main antecedent of HRM service quality as
HRM strength.
Introduction: recent e-HRM research and the goals of this study

Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) includes integration mech-
anisms and contents shared between HRM and Information Technologies (IT)
(Bondarouk & Ruël, 2009). Attempts to define e-HRM have varied over recent dec-
ades and have different connotations in reflecting technological and HRM devel-
opments. Researchers studying the effects of IT on HRM have defined e-HRM as
‘the (planning, implementation and) application of IT for both networking and
supporting at least two individual or collective actors in their shared performing
of HR activities’ (Strohmeier, 2007, p. 20), and more recently as ‘the application of
CONTACT Tanya Bondarouk t.bondarouk@utwente.nl

© 2015 Taylor & Francis
2 T. Bondarouk et al.
computers and telecommunication devices to collect, store, retrieve, and dissemi-

nate [HR] data for business purposes’ (Stone, Deadrick, Lukaszewski, & Johnson,
2015, p. 216). Researchers studying IT-enabled changes in the HRM function have
chosen to define e-HRM as ‘the administrative support of the HR function in
organizations by using internet technology’ (Voermans & van Veldhoven, 2007,
p. 887), ‘a way of implementing HRM strategies, policies, and practices in organ-
izations through the conscious and direct support of and/or with the full use of
channels based on web-technologies’ (Ruël, Bondarouk, & Looise, 2004, p. 16).
In seeking a balance, we define e-HRM in this study as the integration of IT and
the HRM field of scholarly inquiry. This focuses on all the HRM content that is
shared through IT that aims to make HRM processes distinctive and consistent,
more efficient, high in quality and which create long-term opportunities within
and across organizations for targeted users.
The literature suggests that e-HRM has the potential to improve HRM ser-
vice quality (Kovach, Hughes, Fagan, & Maggitti, 2002), which is seen as the
experiences (intangibles) provided by HR specialists for internal customers (line
managers and employees). Customers of HRM services rely on what is intangi-
bly exchanged between HR professionals and HR customers (Schneider, Brief,
& Guzzo, 1996). Further, HRM services are produced and simultaneously con-
sumed, making it impossible to ‘stock’ HRM services as inventory. This forces HR
specialists to demonstrate responsiveness to individual customer demands, and
to see them as receiving rather than demanding (Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2013).
However, since customers are not paid for their participation in HRM service pro-
duction, their participation clearly poses challenges for management. For example,
line managers need to be ‘socialized’ into the HR roles that a new e-HRM situation
expects them to fill (Chung & Schneider, 2002). In the light of this discussion,
e-HRM is seen as one of the channels that can support the below characteristics
of HRM services: intangibility, simultaneity and customer participation.
Despite the optimism accumulated by scholars about the possibilities of e-HRM
enhancing HRM services (Bondarouk & Ruël, 2009; Haines & Lafleur, 2008;
Kovach et al., 2002; Ngai & Wat, 2004), the literature indicates an important
remaining concern.
That is, the empirical findings suggest that the adoption of IT does not always
realize improved HRM services (Ruël & Van der Kaap, 2012; Stone et al., 2015;
Tansley, Kirk, Williams, & Barton, 2014). For example, Gardner, Lepak and Bartol
(2003) discovered that rather than freeing up the time of HR practitioners, the
introduction of e-HRM simply led to an increase in technology-related activities
that replaced administrative ones, without any improvement in HRM services.
Other studies have shown that HR professionals did not use the information that
became available to support HRM services provision (Dery & Wailes, 2005), that
e-HRM technology was primarily used to support routine administrative HR tasks
(Haines & Lafleur, 2008; Hussain, Wallace, & Cornelius, 2007) and that line man-
agers failed to socialize into HR roles as services providers (Reddington & Hyde,
The International Journal of Human Resource Management 3
2008). In an evidence-based review of 40 e-HRM studies, Marler and Fisher (2013,

p. 16) observed that ‘e-HRM studies reflected [a] very early stage of strategic HRM
perspectives’, suggesting that the evidence that e-HRM predicts HRM outcomes
is very variable. They observed that reported e-HRM consequences depended on
a variety of contextual factors and called for a deeper investigation into e-HRM
strategic outcomes, such as an improvement in HRM services.
Overall, the findings also show that the improvement in HRM services, enabled
by e-HRM, is not clearly defined in practice, and that e-HRM is mostly directed
at other targets such as cost reductions and efficiency increases. To address this
challenge, our study sets its first goal as examining HRM service quality as an
outcome of e-HRM implementation.
Looking into the antecedents of e-HRM outcomes, recent studies have given
significant attention to the interplay between IT and HRM as an antecedent of
e-HRM outcomes. For example, in an examination of e-HRM across 12 coun-

tries, Parry (2011) concluded that organizations’ failures to steer the integrative
implementation process of e-HRM caused difficulties in achieving such grand
promises as a reduction in HR headcount. Based on recent studies, Parry (2011)
called for a deeper investigation into the nature of e-HRM usage in intertwined
technology-driven and HRM-driven activities. In a study involving large Dutch
organizations, Ruël and Van der Kaap (2012) found that e-HRM usage and facil-
itation conditions explained 55% of the variance in HRM value creation, and this
encouraged them to call for an in-depth examination of the e-HRM usage process
as a possible explanatory factor of e-HRM outcomes.
The latest special issue of Employee Relations on e-HRM (‘HRM in the Digital
Era’) responds to the above-mentioned call and moves on to a discussion of the
use of the technology to deliver HRM services. The study by Strohmeier and
Kabst (2014) in this issue investigated e-HRM configurations and suggested that
organizational success might be strongly reliant on adopting a ‘power users’ con-
figuration (cf. ‘non-users’ and ‘operational users’). The ‘power users’ configuration
(involving the full use of operational, relational and transformational e-HRM)
was shown to be representative of a significant proportion of organizations, and
was assumed to demonstrate a strong external fit with major contextual factors
and an internal fit within the organization. Another study from the same issue,
conducted in a UK public sector organization with 8000 employees, identified
how the technological elements within e-HRM (through the automation of the
HR data) allowed managers to exploit opportunities for effective HRM (Tansley
et al., 2014). These authors emphasized that, to achieve successful e-HRM
outcomes, organizations need to support the e-HRM implementation process.
To address the e-HRM implementation challenge, our study’s second goal is to
examine the antecedents and components of e-HRM implementation.
Inspired by recent e-HRM research findings, we address two above-mentioned
calls by setting out two objectives for this study: firstly, to establish the importance
of the interplay between technological and organizational aspects and, secondly,

to examine HRM service quality as an outcome of e-HRM implementation.
This paper makes the following contributions to e-HRM research. First, the
study empirically examines the impacts of e-HRM on HRM service quality.
Second, it contributes to an understanding of e-HRM usage by explicitly consid-
ering the role of e-HRM implementation. Based on Adaptive Structuration Theory
(AST; DeSanctis & Poole, 1994), we consider e-HRM implementation to consist
of how often employees use e-HRM, and how they interpret, comprehend and
engage with e-HRM. Third, this paper views HRM service quality as a consequence
of e-HRM (Bondarouk & Ruël, 2013; Strohmeier, 2009) and analyses potential
antecedents that might determine the quality of an HRM service.
Below, we first elaborate on the concept of HRM service quality as the outcome
of e-HRM and argue that this quality is dependent on how end users work with
the technology. We follow this with a discussion on e-HRM strength and HRM
strength as key antecedents. Then, we discuss the roles that usage frequencies
and appropriation play in the relationships between the two key antecedents and
e-HRM service quality. Following this, we present and discuss the results of a
quantitative analysis of these relationships in our public service setting.
HRM service quality

The latest overviews of the e-HRM literature suggest great expectations of
an increase in HRM service quality through the implementation of e-HRM
(Bondarouk & Furtmueller, 2012; Marler & Fisher, 2013; Ruël & Bondarouk,
2014; Van Geffen, Ruël, & Bondarouk, 2013). Specifically, scholars claim that the
use of e-HRM helps the HR function provide a better service to its internal cus-
tomers, that is to managers and employees. Indeed, research has found evidence
of e-HRM having a positive impact on HRM services through the simplification
of processes, the provision of accurate data and enhancing the perceptions of line
managers and employees of HRM services (Bondarouk & Ruël, 2013; Gardner
et al., 2003; Olivas-Lujan, Ramirez, & Zapata-Cantu, 2007).
Before we elaborate on HRM services, we take a closer look at what can be learnt
from developments within services research in general, specifically within the
marketing and operations management areas. From these, we see several poten-
tially important contributions for HRM services. First, studies show that service
quality rests on three basic characteristics: relative intangibility, relative customer
participation and the relative synchronization of production and consumption
services (Schneider, 2004). Second, sub-streams of modern services research
explain the mechanisms of value creation in services through the service-domi-
nant logic, through IT and services and through transformative services (Baron,
Warnaby, & Hunter-Jones, 2014). Based on the service-dominant logic, HRM
services should integrate the use of intangible resources by various organizational
actors (HR professionals, employees and line managers) with the involvement
of networks, interactions and relationships (Vargo & Lusch, 2008). The IT sub-
stream argues that HRM services create value through configurations of actors
and shared information and technology (Maglio & Spohrer, 2008), and through
approaching consumers/actors as being proactive, connected, creative and well
informed (Berthon, Campbell, Pitt, & McCarthy, 2011; Prahalad & Ramaswamy,
2004). Transformative service research (Baron et al., 2014) suggests that HRM
could enhance organizational goals by addressing consumer perspectives such
as well-being and quality of life (Rosenbaum et al., 2011). Inspired by operations
management research, with its focus on a macro-perspective in service delivery,
HRM services are viewed as successful if demand and capacity are well balanced
and if service waiting time is well managed since both have direct positive effects
on a firm’s financial performance and customers’ satisfaction (Boudreau, 1991;
Rust, Zahorik, & Keiningham, 1995; Schmenner, 1995; Taylor & Fullerton, 2000).
Services management research has two important implications for HRM ser-
vices. Firstly, that HRM services are experiences (i.e. intangible) provided by HR
specialists for internal customers (line managers and employees), and, secondly,
that these customers are well informed, proactive and engaged with IT. Seeing
HRM through the services lens urges HR specialists to respond strongly to individ-
ual customer demands, and to see customers as receiving rather than demanding
(Bowen & Greiner, 1986) and as contributing to HRM service co-production
(Meijerink & Bondarouk, 2013; Skaggs & Youndt, 2004).
Towards the research model

We now move on to the antecedents of HRM service quality. In the literature,
several factors related to e-HRM have been considered possible predictors of HRM
service quality. We will argue that three of the most relevant antecedents to HRM
service quality are HRM strength, e-HRM strength and e-HRM use.
HRM strength and HRM service quality
The concept of HRM strength was introduced by Bowen and Ostroff (2004) and
is mainly built on signalling and attribution theories. From a signalling theory
perspective, an HRM system is considered strong, provided employees agree
that it is highly distinctive, consistent and based on a wide consensus within an
organization (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004). Signalling theory sees all organizational
activities as being perceived as signals sent by the organization. As such, HRM
systems need to signal values and characteristics through their e-HRM that influ-
ences the opinions of their customers as to what it would be like to work for the
organization (Celani & Singh, 2011).
The concept of HRM strength addresses how the HRM system is designed and
administered to send signals to employees that enable them to create a shared
meaning of ‘the desired and appropriate responses and form a collective sense
of what is expected’ (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004, p. 204). This shared meaning rep-
resents the strength of the HRM system, and refers to the extent to which it
induces consistent (rather than ambiguous) expectancies regarding appropriate
response patterns. A congruent array of HR practices that provides a clear message
as to the behaviours that are expected, supported and rewarded can influence
organizational behaviour (Schneider et al., 1996) and lead to the achievement of
organizational goals.
From the attribution theory perspective, Bowen and Ostroff (2004) argued that
individuals will make attributions regarding cause–effect relationships if three
conditions are met. First, there needs to be a sufficient degree of distinctiveness
(the event–effect covariation is highly observable). Here, the distinctiveness of
HR practices is interpreted as the relevance of HRM, and refers to whether the
situation is defined in such a way that individuals see the situation as relevant to
the goal and to the legitimacy of the HRM authority such that the individuals
will consider behaving in line with expectations (Sanders, Dorenbosch, & de
Reuver, 2008). Second, there needs to be consistency (the event–effect relationship
presents itself consistently across modalities and time), which refers to internal
uniformity among HR practices. Here, Delery (1998) offered an exemplary study
of HR consistency. Third, there has to be a consensus (individuals share a common
view of the event–effect relationship), and users and policy-makers need to agree
on this relationship (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Sanders et al., 2008). Here, distinctive-
ness, consistency and consensus are three meta-features that characterize both
the HRM message sender and the HRM message itself (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004).
An HRM system that scores highly on all these meta-features is by definition a
strong HRM.
In the past, the HR field has tended to assume that HRM strength was both
necessary and sufficient to deliver clear and transparent HRM messages about HR
policies and practices, and thus was sufficient to improve HRM services (Bowen
& Ostroff, 2004; Delmotte, De Winne, Gilbert, & Sels, 2007; Liao, Toya, Lepak, &
Hong, 2009). This would suggest a direct and positive relationship between HRM
strength and HRM service quality as represented in our first hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relationship between the HRM strength and the qual-
ity of HRM services.
However, as we will argue, the use of e-HRM is likely to mediate this relationship.
As noted by Bowen and Ostroff (2004, p. 206), ‘HRM practices can be viewed as a
symbolic or signaling function by sending messages that employees use to make
sense of ’. An e-HRM application provides a stage on which HRM can accumulate,
store and make messages available to employees. As such, the usage of e-HRM
can be seen as a mechanism through which HRM practices impact individual
perceptions of HRM services because e-HRM offers an interface and facilitates
communication between HR professionals and their customers. In line with these
arguments, we suggest that the frequency of using e-HRM tools is a potential
mediator in the relationship between the HRM system’s strength and the quality
of HRM services, leading to out next hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: The positive relationship between HRM strength and the quality of
HRM services is mediated by the frequency of e-HRM use.
e-HRM strength and HRM service quality
We argue that e-HRM technology can be considered to be strong if it is ‘easy to

use’ and if the tools that contain the HR data are relevant to the HR practices of a
specific organization (building on Chin, Johnson, & Schwarz, 2008; Davis, 1989;
Hussain et al., 2007; Voermans & van Veldhoven, 2007). Both concepts, HRM
strength and e-HRM strength, share an important element: a process in which
clear and consistent messages pass to and from employees and/or e-HRM users.
HRM practices can achieve unambiguous HR messaging through the distinc-

tiveness, consistency and consensus of the HRM system. e-HRM technology can
ensure unambiguous, relevant and easy-to-use messaging for end users.
It is only for HR professionals that e-HRM usage is directly related to job tasks;
line managers and employees are expected to use e-HRM but for other indirect
job-related outcomes (Marler & Dulebohn, 2005). As such, HR task variety may
be high for employees, while task routineness may be low. Consequently, employ-
ees may perceive the HR tasks they carry out through e-HRM as neither simple
nor repetitive (Goodhue & Thompson, 1995). Given this reality, we argue that
e-HRM users will need information ‘reminders’ to be regularly integrated into the
e-HRM database. In other words, e-HRM needs to score highly for its contextual
and intrinsic data qualities.
Conceptually, the e-HRM impact must come through the key factor of e-HRM
usage frequency. If the technology is not used, there will be no impact on services.
Research shows that employees will use IT if it is perceived as having both a sig-
nificant ease-of-use quality (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989; Venkatesh, 2000;
Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003) and a significant information quality
(Goodhue, 1995; Kahn, Strong, & Wang, 2002; Lee, Strong, Kahn, & Wang, 2002).
We therefore argue that an increase in e-HRM usage frequency will be encouraged
if using the e-HRM system requires little effort and if the data processed and stored
within e-HRM applications are of high quality. Information characteristics such
as timeliness, accessibility and relevance have been shown to positively influence
an individual’s perceptions of service quality (DeLone & McLean, 2003; Lee et al.,
2002). In an e-HRM context, HRM-related information is managed and provided
to employees through technological applications, whose usage is likely to influence
employees’ perceptions of HRM services. In line with these arguments, the usage
frequency of e-HRM is expected to influence an employee’s perceptions of HRM
services. Hence, we hypothesize that e-HRM strength contributes positively to
HRM service quality.
Hypothesis 3: There is a positive relationship between the strength of e-HRM and the
quality of HRM services.
At the same time, the frequency of e-HRM use may influence the extent to which
e-HRM strength influences the quality of HRM services.Hypothesis 4: The positive
relationship between the strength of e-HRM and the quality of HRM services is medi-
ated by the frequency of e-HRM use.
e-HRM use appropriation
We apply AST to understand the process of e-HRM usage by employees (DeSanctis

& Poole, 1994; Ruёl, 2001; Schwiegera, Melcher, Ranganathan, & Wen, 2004). AST
posits that ‘the social structures provided by an advanced IT can be described in
two ways: structural features of the technology and the spirit of this feature set’
(DeSanctis & Poole, 1994, p. 126). In line with AST, the spirit of e-HRM is viewed
as the ‘general intent with regard to [the] values and goals underlying a set of
structural features’ (ibid.). IT is seen as becoming established through a process
of social construction by users. Hence, we do not view e-HRM technology as a
purely technical product of design, but as grounded in, and constituted by, its users
(Ruël et al., 2004). Users may choose to work with e-HRM technology in various
ways, for example, by directly using technologies, making judgements about them
or displaying different attitudes towards the technology.
The arguments above are summed up in the concept of appropriation: the
physical and mental activities that users of a technology carry out while selecting
from the potential set of technological options, represented by the intention and
technical features, for day-to-day practices (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Ruёl, 2001).
Appropriation can be regarded as the ongoing institutionalization of e-HRM by
its users: the process of interpreting an e-HRM value and the manner of its use
by drawing upon relevant meanings of e-HRM technology from personal, insti-
tutional and social sources (Jasperson, Sambamurthy, & Zmud, 1999).
AST thinking has recently been introduced into the e-HRM field in the earlier
mentioned research by Ruël and Van der Kaap (2012). Their study showed that
the appropriation of e-HRM and its frequency of use were both positively related
to HRM value creation. Building on this finding, we explore the role of different
appropriation regimes in e-HRM outcomes. Here, we restrict the study to con-
sidering the faithfulness of appropriation, and define this as e-HRM utilization in
line with the intentions of the principles designed into the e-HRM system. Several
scholars have found that the clearer the intention of a technology is to its users, the
more loyally they appropriate it, the more they perceive it as useful and easy to use
and the more they use the technology in a task-oriented way (Bondarouk, 2006;
Chin, Gopal, & Salisbury, 1997). During their active use of e-HRM, employees,
line managers and HR specialists may all influence the adoption of the technology
and, thus, its impacts on the intended e-HRM outcomes.
Strength of H1 HRM service
HRM quality
H5
Frequency of
e-HRM use
Appropriation Appropriation
H2
of e-HRM of e-HRM
Figure 1. Hypothesized relationships between HRM strength, frequency of e-HRM use,
appropriation and HRM service quality.
Appropriation Appropriation
H4
of e-HRM of e-HRM
Frequency of
H6 e-HRM use
Strength of H3 HRM service
e-HRM quality
Figure 2. Hypothesized relationships between e-HRM strength, frequency of e-HRM use,
appropriation and HRM service quality.
The moderating effects of appropriation on the (e-)HRM strength–HRM

service quality relationships
Some researchers, while examining the content and outcomes of HRM strength,
have focused on understanding the perspectives of different groups of organi-
zational members. Differences in HRM interpretation have been found that led
to differences in performance between line managers and employees in service
organizations (Liao et al., 2009) and in the construction sector (Bondarouk,
Looise, & Lempsink, 2009); between line managers and trade union representa-
tives (Delmotte et al., 2007); and even within a single group of employees in the
service sector (Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider, 2008). However, e-HRM researchers
have yet to consider people’s interpretations of their work that involves e-HRM
technologies as a potential factor in the link between HRM strength and HRM
service quality. Further, the potential and conditional mediation effects of working
with e-HRM tools have yet to be investigated.
Building on these rationales, we argue that, in a situation where e-HRM is
utilized, the extent to which the e-HRM tools are appropriated may influence the
mediating effect of the frequency of e-HRM use (Figure 1). Messages originating
from HRM may become clearer and more consistent if targeted employees work
appropriately with e-tools. We therefore propose that the moderating effect of
e-HRM usage in the relationship between HRM strength and HRM service quality
is contingent upon the degree of appropriation:
Hypothesis 5: In situations with a high degree of appropriation, the mediating effect of
the frequency of e-HRM use in the HRM Strength–HRM Service Quality relationship
is stronger than that in situations with a low degree of appropriation.
We also build on the notion that the technology is open to different interpre-
tations by its users (Orlikowski, 2000). That is, although e-HRM software tools
generate the same messages for all users (line managers, employees and HR pro-
fessionals), it is possible that these messages are understood differently. Here, an
example involving the London Ambulance Service (LAS) illustrates the impor-
tance of appropriation in the process of understanding the impact of technology

use on outcomes. The LAS’s command and control information system has become
widely known as an example of an IT failure. The LAS system was designed to
receive calls, to dispatch ambulances and to monitor progress in response to calls.
A crash of the LAS system hit the newspaper headlines with suggestions that sev-
eral people had died as a result (Beynon-Davies, 1995). The subsequent analysis
of the LAS failure revealed that the system was intensively used (the call traffic
load had increased) but in an inappropriate way: there was an inability to deal
with exceptional messages, incorrect databases were created and messages were
repeated. All this frustrated ambulance crews who, given the pressure of their
work, became slow in updating their status (Fitzgerald & Russo, 2005).
Building on the idea of IT appropriation, we argue that users’ appropriation of
e-HRM has significant implications for HRM service quality (Figure 2): if people
do not appropriate the premises and purposes of e-HRM, they may use it less
effectively and this may lead to unanticipated outcomes. This suggests that a core
aspect of successful e-HRM usage is ensuring that people have an appropriate
understanding of the technology.
Hypothesis 6: In situations with a high degree of appropriation, the mediating effect of
the frequency of e-HRM use in the e-HRM Strength–HRM Service Quality relation-
ship is stronger than that in situations with a low degree of appropriation.
Method
Contextual background and sampling
We have applied purposive sampling by selecting a case based on our knowledge
of a population and the purpose of our study. The research was conducted within
a Belgian ministry where the introduction of an e-HRM project had a seven-year
history. As a part of the HRM reorganization, and following careful preparation,
customization, weekly meetings with key users, training courses and feedback
sessions, an Oracle-based e-HRM system called DeBOHRA was launched several

years ago by the HRM department. DeBOHRA contains various modules that
offer HR applications such as personnel data management, training and develop-
ment, recruitment and selection, personnel planning, e-learning, HR report gen-
eration, holiday administration, workflow registration and payroll management.
Our choice of this Belgian ministry was based on two reasons. First, the context
was a typical example of a concentrated and focused e-HRM introduction. The
IT literature has shown the relationships between an HQ and its subsidiaries may
be a factor in the use of e-HRM (see the overview by Van Geffen et al., 2013). The
ministry did not have divisions outside its main headquarters (unlike many private
companies) and this allowed us to analyse the impact of e-HRM in a homogeneous
environment without having to consider additional contexts. The HR director
and all the HR professionals were strongly committed to this research and pro-
vided us with rich data. In total, we spent two years onsite and we were granted
access to archival documents, held conversations with various stakeholders, par-
ticipated in many project meetings and discussed the intermediate results of the
research. Second, the survey for our study was carried out roughly two years after
DeBOHRA’s launch. This timing fitted with the findings of Ruël et al. (2004), who
concluded that an e-HRM maturity of two years created a ‘comfortable research
zone’. More recent HRM system introductions are considered not to be sufficiently
mature to study their appropriation, and e-HRM systems that have been in use
for more than three years have usually achieved stable usage.
At the time of the research, 1310 people were employed at the ministry. Overall,
91% of the ministry’s staff had access to DeBOHRA, and our potential research
population was thus 1236 users (the other employees were waiting for the tech-
nical installation of DeBOHRA). Of the potential sample, 19.6% were senior and
line managers or IT and HR specialists, and the remaining 80.4% were employees
without managerial responsibilities. We were sensitive to the fact that non-mana-
gerial employees might judge e-HRM differently to managers and HR specialists.
Therefore, we limited our population to the 994 employees who did not have
managerial responsibilities but used DeBOHRA. From these, we identified a strat-
ified random sample of 320 that reflected user demographics in terms of gender
(56% female), origin (51% Dutch language users and 49% French language) and
educational level (44% master level, 16% bachelor level, 23% higher vocational
education and 17% high school).
To maximize the response rate, we employed response facilitation techniques
such as pre-notifying potential participants, publicizing the survey and its goals,
establishing the survey’s importance, careful design and sending reminders
(Rogelberg & Stanton, 2007). The selected users were invited to participate in
the research by a personal email. The questionnaire was available online for a
period of four weeks, during which time the potential respondents received three
reminders. In total, we received 140 completed questionnaires, a 43.75% response
rate, with respondents not differing significantly from the population in terms
of gender, origin and education level. Since we used a forced entry design, all the
returned forms were fully complete.
Given that the information on both the dependent and the independent var-
iables came from the same informants, the subsequent analysis ran the risk of
common method variance. While we side with Spector (2006) in believing that the
issue of common method variance is often overstated, we ensured that respondents
knew that they would remain anonymous and we spatially separated questions
on the dependent and independent variables to make it more difficult for them to
infer logical answers (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). Further, a
Harman single-factor test revealed that neither a single factor nor a general factor
accounted for the majority of the variance. As such, we believe we do not have
common method variance problems.
Scale development and measures
To operationalize the variables of interest, we used established scales wherever

possible with answers based on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly dis-
agree) to 5 (strongly agree). To ensure appropriate formulations, the items were
first translated into Dutch and French by Dutch- and French-speaking researchers
(Usunier, 1998) and then pre-tested during focus group sessions at the ministry
involving four DeBOHRA project team members and the HR director. Details of
all the measurement items are included in the Appendix 1.
Human Resource Management Strength was measured using the scale devel-
oped by Delmotte et al. (2007). Three dimensions were assessed: distinctiveness,
consistency and consensus. Distinctiveness measures how HRM stands out in the
organizational environment: this captures attention and interest (Bowen & Ostroff,
2004) and reflects the extent to which a message sent out by HR professionals is
recognized as clear and distinct from other messages (Delmotte et al., 2007). This
dimension was measured using 10 items (e.g. ‘The HR activities in our organi-
zation help me achieve my goals’). HRM Consistency is related to features of HR
practices that are consistent over time, both within the organization and within
the context (Delmotte et al., 2007). We used five items, such as ‘There is a clear
fit between HR promises and deliverables’, to capture this construct. Consensus
taps into the extent of mutual consent within HRM practices, referring to the
features of the HR staff and/or HR practices that foster consensus among internal
customers in their views on cause–effect relationships (Bowen & Ostroff, 2004).
We used three items for this construct, for example, ‘Management commonly
supports HRM policy in our organization’.
e-HRM Strength assesses employees’ perceptions of the relevance of the tech-
nology and of the quality of the data delivered by the e-HRM application. It was
measured using scales based on Davis (1989), Venkatesh et al. (2003) and Lee et al.
(2002). Respondents were asked to answer questions related to three dimensions.
Firstly, perceived ease of use assesses the degree to which users believe that working
with e-HRM tools is effortless (four items were used, such as the reverse item
‘Interacting with e-HRM requires a lot of effort’). Intrinsic data quality measures
the quality of the information in its own right, independent of the specific HRM
context (three items: e.g. ‘The data on the e-HRM site are reliable’). Contextual
data quality evaluates the quality of the information as applied to the specific
HRM context (three items: e.g. ‘The data on the e-HRM site are up-to-date for
my HR activities’).
Both the above constructs, HRM strength and e-HRM strength, were oper-
ationalized as higher order constructs, with the lower level consisting of the
scores for the conceptually distinct lower order constructs as determined by an
exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation. The factors for the lower order
constructs were derived from an additive composite of the scale scores used to
provide the higher order constructs. In that sense, the higher order constructs
are formative indices (Diamantopoulos & Winklhofer, 2001).

Frequency of use was assessed using two items that asked employees their per-
ceptions of how often they use e-HRM (e.g. ‘I use e-HRM very intensively’).
Appropriation is understood as the ongoing and mutual adjustments and improvi-
sations between the technology and its users, and this was measured using a scale
developed by Ruёl (2001). This included four items such as ‘I use the e-HRM tools
in accordance with what the manuals state’.
HRM service quality was conceptualized as a hierarchical construct composed
of several components. This was based on earlier conceptualizations of the more
general ‘service quality’ construct that was based on the disconfirmation paradigm
(Brady & Cronin, 2001; Gummesson & Grönroos, 2012). Our operationalization
of HRM services is built on the work of Brady and Cronin (2001) who suggested
a consolidated three-dimensional framework. Their evidence suggests that ser-
vice quality is a hierarchical construct that harmonizes and integrates the two
above-described models of service quality. Based on their study, we view HRM
service quality as a combination of employees’ perceptions of interaction quality
(the process of HRM service delivery and the interface between HR professionals
and customers), service environment quality (the ‘built’ environment such as facil-
ities, social atmosphere and conditions) and outcome quality (what the customer
is left with at the end of the service process).
The quality of the HRM service environment component captures the extent
to which HR professionals deliver error-free services (three items: e.g. ‘HR ser-
vices are performed correctly the first time’). Quality of HRM service interaction
captures the degree to which HR professionals assist employees (three items:
e.g. ‘The HR department is willing to provide services’). Finally, quality of HRM
service outcomes captures the specific perceived benefits of the e-HRM system
(five items: e.g. ‘Since the introduction of e-HRM, duplication of documents has
been minimized’).
As control variables, we used the age of respondents (metric), their education
level (ordinal) and the number of years working in the ministry (metric).
In terms of the reliability of our measurement items, all but two of our lowest
level constructs had Cronbach’s alphas above 0.7, a level that indicates acceptable
reliability. The remaining two, HRM consensus and e-HRM appropriation, fell
only slightly below this a threshold.
Analysis methods
Initially, OLS regression was used to test a direct effects model. We separately tested
the proposed relationships on all three dimensions of HRM service quality (Tables
2 and 3, column 1).
The mediating effects model was based on the test logic of Baron and Kenny
(1986). Further, a Sobel test for the significance of the indirect effects was carried
out (Preacher & Hayes, 2004). The Sobel test is seen as superior to the Baron and
Kenny (1986) test logic because it directly tests the significance of the indirect (i.e.
mediated) effect. The upper (UL) and lower levels (LL) of the regression coeffi-
cients were calculated based on a thousand iterations in a bootstrapping model.
If the confidence interval (here, 95%) spans ‘0’, then a mediation hypothesis is
not supported.
To test for any moderation of the mediation effects, we investigated whether
the frequency of usage mediated the relationships between both e-HRM strength
and HRM strength and the dependent variables. Here, we applied a moderated
mediation analysis (Preacher, Rucker, & Hayes, 2007) to test whether the impacts
on performance of e-HRM strength and HRM strength were mediated by the
frequency of usage under various levels of appropriation. Here, as a first step,
we split the sample into two based on the level of appropriation and calculated
mediation models for the two groups with low and high levels of appropriation
(see Aiken & West, 1991 for a discussion on the split-sample method). Next, we
compared the regression coefficients of the two models to identify any differences
in the mediation effect. In addition to this sub-group approach, we then tested for
moderated mediations using the method suggested by Preacher et al. (2007) that
treats the mediator as a continuous variable and avoids the perceived drawbacks
of the sub-group approach (Edwards & Lambert, 2007).
Results
The correlations calculated from the data indicate significant positive relationships
between the constructs (Table 1). Given that some of the independent variables
were correlated, we checked for potential multicollinearity. The diagnostics show
that the highest value for the Variance Inflation Factor is 2.206, well below the
critical threshold of 10.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations between the variables (n = 140).

Mean StDv 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 e-HRM strength 29.85 7.25
2 HRM strength 60.70 7.36 .538**
3 Appropriation of e-HRM 13.71 3.11 .335** .274**
4 Frequency of e-HRM use 3.30 1.71 .212* .235** .149
5 Quality of HRM service 7.51 2.64 .483** .688* .187* .222*
environment
6 Quality of HRM service 8.89 2.52 .410** .676** .183* .118 .691**
interaction
7 Quality of HRM service 15.02 3.92 .656** .621** .193* .148 .614** .555**
outcomes
Notes: The constructs used in the analysis are calculated as factor scores and so their means are zero with a unity
standard deviation. Therefore, for the means and the standard deviations, we report the results for unweighted
additive indices based on the raw scores.
*p < .05.
**p < .01.
Table 2a. HRM strength and the quality of the HRM service environment.
III: mediation and
III: mediation and high appropri-
I: direct effects II: mediation low appropriation ation
Age −.229** −.230** −.323** −.121
Education −.042 −.035 −.011 .128
Years of working −.061 .059 −191# .109
HRM strength .672*** .656*** .707*** .583***
Frequency .066 .051 .100
R2 = .513*** R2 = .517*** R2 = .564*** R2 = .466***
df = 139 df = 139 df = 61 df = 61
LL = −.0055 LL = −.0054 LL = −.0140
UL = .0214 UL = .0158 UL = .0491
**p < .01.
***p < .001.
HRM strength: direct effects, mediation and contingent mediation
The results using the direct effects models indicate a good overall model quality,
explaining between 44.7 and 51.3% of the variance in the dependent variables
(R2 values in Tables 2(a)–(c), column 1). The coefficients of HRM strength (column 2) are
all strong (between .606 and .686) and significant at the 1% level.
The mediation effects model failed to find any mediation linked to frequency:
in no instance was the coefficient for HRM strength reduced. This finding was
supported for all three performance variables by the Sobel test’s insignificant
scores and by the insignificant results for conditional indirect effects at specific
levels of the moderator (Preacher et al., 2007).
The moderated mediation models also fail to show any significant evidence of
mediation effects in either the low or the high appropriation regimes, again with
insignificant Sobel test scores. That is, no significant changes can be identified at
the level of the individual coefficients.
Table 2b. HRM strength and the quality of the HRM service interaction.
III: mediation and
Age −.015 −.014 .060 −.139
Education −.023 .019 .050 .044
Years of working .033 .035 −.004 .122
HMR strength .686*** .697*** .663*** .700***
Frequency .042 −.006 −.097
R2 = .458*** R2 = .460*** R = .425***
2
R2 = .470***
df = 139 df = 139 df = 61 df = 61
LL = −.0100 LL = −.0104 LL = −.0451
UL = .0111 UL = .0118 UL = .0169
***p < .001.
Table 2c. HRM strength and the quality of HRM service outcomes.

III: mediation and

Age −.284*** −.284*** −.303** −.265*
Education −.083 −.053 −.180# .941
Years of working .103 .103 .136 −.065
HMR strength .606*** .606*** .571*** .556***
Frequency .000 −.144 .166
R2 = .447*** R2 = .460*** R2 = .447*** R2 = .454***
df = 139 df = 139 df = 77 df = 61
LL = −.0111 LL = −.0194 LL = −.0042
UL = .0173 UL = .0093 UL = .0567
*p < .5.
**p < .01.
***p < .001.
e-HRM strength: direct effects, mediation and contingent mediation
The direct effects models show a good overall model quality, explaining from 18.4
to 46.6% of the variance in the dependent variables (see the R2 terms in Tables
3(a)–(c), column 1). The e-HRM strength coefficients are all strong (between .395
and .610) and significant at the 1% level.
The mediation effects model again also failed to identify any mediation linked
to frequency: the coefficient for e-HRM strength was not reduced in any of the
cases. This finding was supported by the insignificant Sobel test scores for all three
performance variables and by the lack of significant conditional indirect effects at
specific levels of the moderator (Preacher et al., 2007). The moderated mediation
models also again failed to indicate mediation effects in either the low or the high
appropriation regimes, with insignificant Sobel test scores for both regimes.
Discussion
Recent e-HRM studies suggest that IT are pushing HRM into a new position
in organizations by supporting HR decisions and services by providing ade-
quate descriptive and prognostic information. Electronic recruiting, training,
Table 3a. e-HRM strength and the quality of the HRM service environment.
III: mediation and
Age −.144 −.150 .227* .076
Education −.052 −.040 .083 −.190
Years of working .178 −.106 −.066 −.177
e-HRM strength .428*** .401*** .492** .223#
Frequency .130 .069 .213#
R2 = .281*** R2 = .279*** R = .390***
2
R = .215*
2
df = 139 df = 139 df = 77 df = 61

LL = −.0023 LL = −.0055 LL = −.0042
UL = .0338 UL = .0194 UL = .0888
#p < .1
*p < .05
**p < .01
***p < .001.
Table 3b. e-HRM strength and the quality of the HRM service interaction.
III: mediation and
Age .067 .066 .151 −.101
Education .007 .010 .119 −.124
Years of working −.146 −.145 −.244# .034
e-HRM strength .395*** .388*** .472*** .156
Frequency −.032 .011 .075
R2 = .184*** R = .184***
2
R = .280***
2
R = .067
2
df = 139 df = 139 df = 77 df = 61

LL = −.0104 LL = −.0092 LL = −.0241
UL = .0207 UL = .0135 UL = .05828
#p < .1.
***p < .001.
Table 3c. e-HRM strength and the quality of HRM service outcomes.

III: mediation and
Age −.179* −.180* −.189# −.180
Education −.060 −.059 .085 .007
Years of working −.020 −.020 −.032 .007
e-HRM strength .610*** .608*** .641*** .473***
Frequency .012 −.143# .194#
R2 = .466*** R2 = .466*** R = .557***
2
R2 = .372***
df = 139 df = 139 df = 77 df = 61
LL = −.0092 LL = −.180 LL = −.0022
UL = .179 UL = .0098 UL = .0677
***p < .001.
*p< .05; #p .1.
compensation and many other HRM areas have unlocked a world of possibilities:
by introducing new actors to HRM, by involving line managers, by supporting a
range of HRM services, by offering greater flexibility in HRM and hence by gener-
ally inaugurating the ‘era of e-HRM’. In theory, there is a sound basis for believing
that e-HRM should facilitate improvements in the HRM service provided by HR
specialists to employees and line managers (Ruël et al., 2004).
However, empirical studies report on complex organizational realities related

to e-HRM implementation. Strohmeier (2009) attributed the empirical divergence
in e-HRM research findings to the different conceptual origins of the expected
consequences of e-HRM, be it technology, organizational context and/or a combi-
nation of the two. Marler and Fisher (2013) advanced this discussion by observing
that the majority of e-HRM studies employ a simple deterministic approach in
treating technology, and thus failing to adopt a more nuanced approach to the
technology that considers both its content and its context.
This study builds on the calls from e-HRM scholars to observe the impact of
e-HRM technology and organizational (HRM) issues, and their interaction (usage
and appropriation context), on e-HRM consequences such as HRM service quality.
In addressing this, we formulated two objectives for our study: to examine HRM
service quality as an outcome of e-HRM implementation and to investigate the
antecedents and components of e-HRM implementation. Specifically, this study

tested the impact of e-HRM technology and organizational (HRM) issues, medi-
ated by usage, on HRM service quality.
Theoretical contributions
Our first contribution stems from our examination of technological and HRM
impacts on HRM service quality. Here, we introduced a new concept, e-HRM
strength, to reflect those characteristics of an e-HRM technology that ensure a
strong HRM message is conveyed to and from e-HRM users. We base our argu-
ment for this on HRM and e-HRM strengths. HRM is considered strong if it
ensures unambiguous HR messaging through the distinctiveness, consistency
and consensus of the HRM system. Similarly, e-HRM technology is considered to
be strong if it ensures unambiguous, relevant and easy-to-use messaging for end
users. Overall, this work provides evidence that both e-HRM strength and HRM
strength have significant explanatory powers in terms of the three considered
aspects of HRM service quality. Testing the direct effects indicated that the models
had a good overall quality, explaining between 44.7 and 51.3% of the variance in
the dependent variables (for HRM strength) and 18.4 and 46.6% of the variance
in the case of e-HRM strength. Albeit with some caution, we can say that HRM
strength seems to play a stronger role than e-applications in HRM service quality.
Nevertheless, one should not underestimate the role of technological properties:
they also had a strong explanatory power in the level of HRM service quality.
Our second contribution is in responding to the call by e-HRM scholars to
examine the role of e-HRM usage, specifically e-HRM appropriation and fre-
quency of use, in contributing to e-HRM outcomes in organizations. This contri-
bution is intertwined with the application of the concept of e-HRM appropriation
borrowed from AST. We argued that the potential advantages of e-HRM would be
dependent on how the e-HRM technology was used. In other words, we expected
to find that employees’ appropriation of e-HRM would play a moderating role
(mediated by the frequency of use) in the relationship between e-HRM charac-

teristics and HRM service quality. However, the evidence did not support the
hypothesized relationship between e-HRM appropriation and e-HRM outcomes:
the relationships between antecedents and outcomes were not dependent on how
employees used e-HRM technology.
The results were consistent across different e-HRM use frequencies and differ-
ent appropriation regimes (i.e. the mediation strength did not differ in regimes
with different degrees of appropriation, Table 3(a)–(c)). It is interesting to compare
this finding with the study of Ruël and Van der Kaap (2012) who also considered
the concept of technology appropriation in e-HRM value creation. They found
e-HRM appropriation to be related directly and positively to HRM efficiency and
effectiveness, but not to HRM service quality. The explanatory power of e-HRM
appropriation was greater in their study than that of frequency of use, indicat-
ing that HRM is expected to have a greater value if users work with e-HRM as
intended, rather than just use it more often. In our study, we did not look at these
direct relationships but explored the moderated effect of e-HRM appropriation in
the frequency of use-dependent relationships between e-HRM and HRM strengths
and HRM service quality.
The theoretical contributions of our findings relate particularly to our use of
AST. When DeSanctis and Poole (1994) proposed AST, their objective was in part
to explain the conflicting findings in Group Support Systems (GSS) research and
found an explanation for the lack of consistency in the ‘observed differences …
attributable to the fact that different groups use GSSs differently’ (ibid., p. 140). It
might similarly be useful for e-HRM researchers to identify how and why different
social groups of users (line managers, employees without managerial responsi-
bilities and HR professionals) work with e-HRM based on social and physical
contexts. A group will work on certain tasks supported by e-HRM applications,
and structuring will occur as the group chooses to use (or not) various features
of e-HRM applications. Many such processes may occur without group members
being overly conscious of their appropriation of e-HRM. IT researchers have
shown that the appropriation pattern may lead to observable group dynamic
processes that, in turn, may affect IT implementation outcomes (Chidambaram,
1996; Chudoba, 1999; Kahai, 1997). Taking inspiration from AST studies, e-HRM
research might benefit from examining group processes such as leadership, coor-
dination mechanisms, relational developments and hierarchical (re)structuring,
as well as their influence on appropriation and, eventually, on e-HRM outcomes.
It has been shown that, over time, the outcomes of appropriations and of imple-
mentations may be mutually reinforcing. This opens another avenue for e-HRM
researchers in that they could observe e-HRM implementations over a lengthy
period and assess the mutual interactions between appropriation, group mech-
anisms and outcomes.
In our study, we only investigated one social group of e-HRM users: employ-
ees. This was to an extent because, in our view, a possible explanation for the
insignificant role of e-HRM appropriation in the mediated relationships between

both e-HRM and HRM strengths and HRM service quality may be grounded in
the nature of users’ job tasks that involve the support of e-HRM. This group of
users in our study did not have to work with e-HRM on a daily basis, and many
seldom worked with it. Given this reality, Marler and Dulebohn’s (2005) view that
future research should examine the balance between mandatory and voluntarily
use of e-HRM by different organizational members is relevant. We would add that
the balance between regular and occasional e-HRM use also needs further exam-
ination. A blend of voluntary and occasional users may explain the irrelevance of
the moderating effect of e-HRM appropriation on the quality of HRM services.
Further, non-managerial employees do not have to work with e-HRM to achieve
their primary job tasks, as the use of e-HRM is not directly linked to their indi-
vidual job performance (Marler & Dulebohn, 2005). Another possible direction
for future e-HRM research would be to split the sample based on the nature of
the tasks they perform through e-HRM, as one cannot assume that the same job
tasks are being executed by all employees when it comes to e-HRM.
Turning to research methods, we would suggest that e-HRM researchers
attracted by AST ideas to broaden the scope of the approach. An analysis of
AST-based studies reveals that most of them investigate the use of technology
through an input process–output framework, where input and output variables
are measured through questionnaires, and other factors are controlled during
the experimental setting (Pozzebon & Pinsonneault, 2001). We based our study
on an in-case survey. Adopting a mixed method approach, for example, com-
bining an experimental setting, with coding schemes for diverse usage patterns,
with discourse analysis could offer a new perspective to e-HRM research on the
deeper patterns of e-HRM use by different groups. This suggestion concurs with
Marler and Fisher (2013) who noted that only five studies in their literature review
were experimental in nature, and that there was no ‘cross-fertilization of research
approaches’.
When considering e-HRM usage, we also examined the role of frequency of
use, assuming it would mediate the relationships between the strengths of both
e-HRM and HRM and the HRM service quality. The fact that we did not find
empirical evidence for this proposed mediation suggests a new path for research:
to investigate the process itself – to explore which process variables might be rel-
evant. McMullen and Dimov (2013) conceptually addressed the various ways in
which researchers study the ‘process’ concept. In our study, we opted to represent
the process using our ‘appropriation’ and ‘frequency of use’ variables, and placing
these in a moderated mediation model. As such, we interpreted the process as ‘a
category of concepts’ (McMullen & Dimov, 2013). However, there are other empir-
ical ways to view a process, such as ‘a sequence of events of activities’ (McMullen
& Dimov, 2013). We see a limitation of our approach as that it did not allow one
to adopt a real-time process perspective. Our findings are limited in that while
they do show that mediation (process as a category of concept) does not appear
to take place, they do not reveal in detail the ‘passing of messages’ (process as a
sequence of events or activities).
Our third contribution concerns HRM service quality, which many studies have
observed to be one of the most important consequences of e-HRM (Bondarouk
& Ruël, 2013; Marler & Fisher, 2013; Ruël et al., 2004; Strohmeier, 2009; Van
Geffen et al., 2013). We borrowed a consolidated three-dimensional framework
from Brady and Cronin (2001) and conceptualized HRM service quality as the
customers’ perceptions of HRM interaction quality, HRM environment quality
and HRM outcome quality. We concluded that the perceived quality of HRM
services is unaffected by the extent of appropriation or by the frequency of using
the e-HRM system, regardless of which components of HRM service quality we
chose as the dependent variable (environmental quality, interaction quality or out-
come quality). This conclusion conflicts with those IT studies that relied solely on
people’s perceptions, understandings and interpretations of IT. Many such studies

(Ciborra, 1999; Orlikowski, 2000; Orlikowski & Barley, 2001; Orlikowski & Scott,
2008) have argued that people enact technology as they work with it. Our study
suggests otherwise: that the technology delivers results (albeit sometimes mixed)
independently of how people appropriate it. A possible explanation, as the inter-
view with the HRM director and document analysis showed, is that, in our study,
employees were actively involved in implementing e-HRM. The various focus
groups, workshops and presentations employed as part of the implementation
process may have enhanced the psychological involvement of employees in the
whole process of restructuring HRM. They were aware of the goals of the changes,
the contents and the steps being taken in the DeBOHRA project. It would seem
that, in our case, the employees’ involvement and awareness of e-HRM outweighed
the impact of their, sometimes minimal, usage of the technology in determining
their perceptions of HRM service quality. We saw that users attached a great
importance to their involvement: even if they did not use e-HRM that frequently,
they still appropriated and valued the changes brought about by the technology.
Future research could focus on the role of user involvement and participation in
e-HRM projects in low-use regimes.
Future research specifically focusing on comparing the explanatory powers of
e-HRM strength and of HRM strength on HRM service quality could also contrib-
ute to a more nuanced understanding of e-HRM performance. A first step in this
direction has been taken here by analysing whether e-HRM and HRM strengths
interact. The argument behind this approach was that HRM service quality would
only emerge if a strong e-HRM was coupled with a strong HRM department.
Future research could examine why employees have different perceptions of HRM
service quality by considering other antecedents than those covered here, such as
employment status and leader–follower relationships.
Based on our study, we call for new e-HRM research, as a field of scholarly
inquiry, that focuses on integration mechanisms and the sharing of HRM content
through IT in order to make HRM processes distinctive and consistent, more
efficient, high in quality and able to provide long-term opportunities within and
across organizations for targeted users. As such, future research should aim to
improve the understanding of this phenomenon and to contribute to its progress
in terms of its content, design, implementation, interaction with the organizational
context and consequences.
Limitations of the study
We recognize that our findings need to be viewed in the light of their several lim-
itations. We only partially applied AST to a new context (e-HRM) and, therefore,
it is desirable to investigate the qualitative changes and boundaries of this theory
through further e-HRM research. By introducing the concept of appropriation to
e-HRM research, our study and the work of Ruël and Van der Kaap (2012) offer an
operationalization of structuration processes for those scholars interested in the

dynamic nature of e-HRM implementations. However, the notion of appropriation
needs to be considered carefully as it will draw researchers to causal modelling that
are pursuing an agenda other than seeing e-HRM implementations as integrated
into and coming from broader institutional and social contextual developments.
AST does not address the emerging practice-based strand of IT implementation,
and therefore we did not include the ongoing production and reproduction of
e-HRM structures through the situated social practices of e-HRM users. We would
nevertheless encourage e-HRM scholars to seek ways to study e-HRM technology
implementation from the structuration perspective.
Another limitation is that we focused on one specific stakeholder group:
employees as receivers of HRM services. Since other studies suggest a lack of
equivalence across employment groups (Liao et al., 2009; Nishii et al., 2008), a
concerted effort to explicitly assess the differences between managers and employ-
ees in their experiences of e-HRM practices could represent a promising direction
for future research.
The approach outlined in our study needs to be replicated and extended in
various directions. First, it could be replicated in different organizational settings,
such as private companies of different sizes and ages. Second, it could be repeated
with other types of e-HRM systems, for example, with systems that allow users
greater freedom in interpreting them and working with them since this would
add another dimension to the analysis of e-HRM use and appropriation. In such
environments, we would expect the appropriation and frequency of e-HRM use
to have a larger influence on the relationships between the dependent and inde-
pendent variables. Third, we would expect an analysis of the proposed relation-
ships, in high versus low e-HRM usage contexts, to shed further light on e-HRM
performance. In our research setting, the preparations for e-HRM introduction
were both very thorough and top-down. This may have limited the scope for low
appropriation. With less-thorough preparation and introduction, we would expect
appropriation and frequency of use to have greater impacts.
Practical implications
Our results have some clear implications for practitioners. At the risk of sound-
ing as though we are stating the obvious, we repeat that the anticipated benefits
of e-HRM implementation are not always easy for organizations to achieve. In
assessing the impact of two major factors, e-HRM strength and HRM strength,
we saw that HRM strength had a greater effect on HRM service quality. As such,
those responsible for e-HRM in organizations should ensure that HRM systems
(policies and practices) are well designed and well communicated before they
adopt an online system. It is crucially important that HR leaders establish HRM
systems that are highly distinctive and consistent, and that achieve a wide consen-
sus among HR practitioners. While this might seem obvious, this is the first study
to empirically validate, in the context of e-HRM projects, the need to prioritize
the HRM content over the IT content. Given this evidence, those responsible for
e-HRM projects should start with HRM-driven discussions before implementing

e-HRM.
Further, we observed that the quality of the HRM service might in part be
dependent on the technological characteristics of the e-HRM, such as intrinsic and
contextual information qualities (whether the data stored in e-HRM are reliable
and relevant for the HR tasks in a specific organization). For practitioners, this
means that e-HRM applications should be designed such that they are clear and
easy to work with for the targeted users. It is important that an e-HRM applica-
tion is personal for the targeted users, prototyped and verified by specialists and
then supported by a customer-oriented helpdesk. Given our findings, we would
emphasize that e-HRM applications should be seen as a tool to support HRM.
Another recommendation coming out of our study is that to boost the positive
effects of e-HRM, one should avoid allowing the technology to dominate and
replace the core meaning of HRM. Practitioners need to be aware that a successful
e-HRM appropriation process by users requires the mutual development of both
e-HRM and HRM strengths.
Conclusions
The current study examined the impacts of e-HRM technology, the usage of the
technology and of HRM issues on HRM service quality. Inspired by AST, we
elaborated the concept of e-HRM appropriation and explored its role in the rela-
tionships between both e-HRM strength and HRM strength and HRM service
quality. We used moderated mediation analysis on data from a sample of 140
employees of an administration unit. While we identified strong positive direct
effects of both HRM strength and of e-HRM strength, we failed to uncover the
anticipated direct mediation and contingent mediation effects.
The study contributes to e-HRM knowledge by showing that HRM strength is a

key antecedent of HRM service quality, meaning that if organizations do not have a
strong HRM system to begin with, they should not implement e-HRM: it will fail.
There are several opportunities to continue this line of research: by exploring
the boundaries of AST in e-HRM research, by carrying out a detailed examina-
tion of the explanatory powers of technological and HRM characteristics and by
studying the impact of e-HRM in mandatory and voluntary regimes as well as
with regular and occasional users.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Tanya Bondarouk is a full professor of Human Resource Management at the University of
Twente, the Netherlands. Since 2002, she has been busy with the emerging research area
of Electronic HRM. Her main publications concern an integration of Human Resource
Management and social aspects of IT Implementations. Her research covers both private and
public sectors and deals with a variety of areas such as the implementation of e-HRM, man-
agement of HR-IT change, HRM contribution to IT projects, roles of line managers in e-HRM
and implementation of HR Shared Service Centres. She has conducted research projects with
the Dutch Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations, Dow Chemical, Ford, IBM and Shell.
Among her current research projects are Implementation of HR Shared Service Centres at
the Dutch Ministry of Defense and the Belgian Federal Public Health Service. Since 2006,
she is involved in organizing European academic workshops on e-HRM and international
workshops on HRIS.
Rainer Harms is an associate professor of International Entrepreneurship, University of
Twente, the Netherlands. His research interests are (international) entrepreneurship, firm
growth and innovation management, where he cooperates with international scholars and
Entrepreneur of the Year e V Germany. Rainer was a visiting professor at WU Vienna, UAB
Barcelona and Hochschule Lichtenstein (research). Since 2010, Rainer is the Research Group
Leader for International Entrepreneurship at NIKOS.
David Lepak is a professor of Strategic HRM; his research focuses on the strategic man-
agement of human capital as well as managing contingent labour for competitive advan-
tage. He has published numerous articles on these topics in the Academy of Management
Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Management
Studies, Human Resource Management Review, Research in Personnel and Human Resource
Management, among others. He is an associate editor of Academy of Management Review
and currently serves on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Human
Resource Management, Journal of Management Studies, Human Resource Management Journal
and International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital.
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Appendix 1. Constructs and items

Criteria and scale
First order Second order: definitions Third order: items source
e-HRM Ease of use – the degree to • I find it easy to get the e-HRM to do Four items based
strength which an individual believes what I want it to do on Davis (1989) and
that using a particular system • Interacting with e-HRM requires a Venkatesh et al. (2003)
would be free of physical and lot of mental effort® α = .881
mental effort (Davis, 1989) • My interaction with e-HRM is clear Var. Expl. = 74.90%
and understandable
• Overall, I find e-HRM easy to use
Intrinsic information quality – The data on the e-HRM site: Three items based on
that information has quality in • are reliable Lee et al. (2002)
its own right (Lee et al., 2002) • are objective α = .899
• come from good sources Var. Expl. = 85.57%
Contextual information quality The data on the e-HRM site: Three items based on
– that the information has • are complete Lee et al. (2002)
quality when considered • are up-to-date for my HR activities α = .891
within the context of HRM • are relevant for my HR activities Var. Expl. = 82.13%
tasks (Lee et al., 2002)

HRM Distinctiveness – features that • I am regularly informed about the Ten items based on
strength allow HRM to stand out in the initiatives taken by the HR depart- Delmotte et al. (2007)
environment, and to capture ment α = .887
attention and interest (Bowen • In this organization it is clear what Var. Expl. = 86.25%
& Ostroff, 2004; Delmotte the tasks of the HR department are
et al., 2007) • The actual functioning of the HR
department is a mystery to me®
• The HR department works too
much behind the scenes®
• The HR activities in my organization
are easy to understand
• I understand the HR strategy of my
organization
• The HR department gives
understandable information on HR
activities
• I often wonder about the use-
fulness of the HR activities in our
organization®
• The HR department undertakes
actions that exactly meet my needs
• The HR activities in our organization
help me to achieve my goals
Consistency – establishment • The HR activities for employee Five items based Del-
of an effect over time and of appraisal succeed in encouraging the motte et al. (2007)
modalities, regardless of the desired behavior α = .78
form of interactions (Bowen • The HR activities add value to the Var. Expl. = 54.46%
& Ostroff, 2004; Delmotte functioning of our organization
et al., 2007) • There is a clear fit between HR
promises and deliverables
• There is a wide gap between the
intended and the actual effects of HR
initiatives®
• The HR activities implemented in
this organization sound good in the-
ory, but do not function in practice®
Consensus – an agreement • Top management and HR profes- Three items based on
among individuals on the sionals clearly share the same HR Delmotte et al. (2007)
event–effect relationship vision α = .631
(Bowen & Ostroff, 2004; • HR management is established Var. Expl. = 87.64%
Delmotte et al., 2007) by mutual agreement between HR
professionals and line management
• Management commonly supports
HR policy in our organization
(Continued)
Appendix 1. (Continued).
Criteria and scale
First order Second order: definitions Third order: items source
Usage of Appropriation of e-HRM – • I use the e-HRM tools in accordance Four items based on
e-HRM continuous, progressive and with what manuals (documentation) Ruёl (2001)
mutual adjustments, accom- state is intended α = .612
modations and improvisations • IT experts would not agree with the Var. Expl. = 46.64%
between the technology and way I use the e-HRM tools®
the users • I use the e-HRM applications differ-
ently from the initial purposes®
• I do not use the e-HRM applications
in an optimal way®
Frequency of e-HRM use – the • I use e-HRM in my daily work Two items – self-con-
extent of actual usage of the • I use e-HRM very intensively structed
system α = .757
Var. Expl. = 80.67
Perceived Quality of HRM service environ- • The HR services are performed Three items based
HRM ment – the reliability of the correctly the first time on Brady and Cronin
service HRM (Brady & Cronin, 2001) • The HR services guarantee error- (2001)
quality free administration α = .819
• The HR department provides its ser- Var. Expl. = 73.53%
vices at the time it promises to do so
Quality of HRM service interac- • The HR department is willing to Three items based
tions – willingness and respon- provide a service on Brady and Cronin
siveness of HR professionals • HR professionals inform employees (2001)
at the HR–customer interface exactly when new HR activities will α = .701
(Brady & Cronin, 2001) be carried out Var. Expl. = 63.16%
• When I need advice on HR issues,
the HR department helps me quickly
Quality of HRM service out- Since the introduction of e-HRM: Five items – self-
comes – effects following the • Duplication of HR documents is constructed.
introduction of e-HRM minimized α = .736
• Administration of HR documents Var. Expl. = 83.15%
is efficient
• I feel that I get too much HR-related
information®
• I can access HR personal informa-
tion at my earliest convenience
• E-tools help to take care of routine
HR transactions
Note: ® signifies a reversed item.

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Does e-HRM lead to better HRM service?

Tanya Bondarouk, Rainer Harms & David Lepak

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Does e-HRM lead to better HRM service?

Electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) is Adaptive Structuration

Introduction: recent e-HRM research and the goals of this study

CONTACT Tanya Bondarouk t.bondarouk@utwente.nl

computers and telecommunication devices to collect, store, retrieve, and dissemi-

2008). In an evidence-based review of 40 e-HRM studies, Marler and Fisher (2013,

e-HRM outcomes. For example, in an examination of e-HRM across 12 coun-

of the interplay between technological and organizational aspects and, secondly,

HRM service quality

Towards the research model

HRM strength and HRM service quality

e-HRM strength and HRM service quality

We argue that e-HRM technology can be considered to be strong if it is ‘easy to

HRM practices can achieve unambiguous HR messaging through the distinc-

e-HRM use appropriation

We apply AST to understand the process of e-HRM usage by employees (DeSanctis

Strength of H1 HRM service

Strength of H3 HRM service

The moderating effects of appropriation on the (e-)HRM strength–HRM

tance of appropriation in the process of understanding the impact of technology

sessions, an Oracle-based e-HRM system called DeBOHRA was launched several

Scale development and measures

To operationalize the variables of interest, we used established scales wherever

are formative indices (Diamantopoulos & Winklhofer, 2001).

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations between the variables (n = 140).

HRM strength: direct effects, mediation and contingent mediation

Table 2c. HRM strength and the quality of HRM service outcomes.

III: mediation and

e-HRM strength: direct effects, mediation and contingent mediation

df = 139 df = 139 df = 77 df = 61

df = 139 df = 139 df = 77 df = 61

Table 3c. e-HRM strength and the quality of HRM service outcomes.

However, empirical studies report on complex organizational realities related

antecedents and components of e-HRM implementation. Specifically, this study

(mediated by the frequency of use) in the relationship between e-HRM charac-

insignificant role of e-HRM appropriation in the mediated relationships between

people’s perceptions, understandings and interpretations of IT. Many such studies

Limitations of the study

operationalization of structuration processes for those scholars interested in the

e-HRM projects should start with HRM-driven discussions before implementing

The study contributes to e-HRM knowledge by showing that HRM strength is a

service quality financially accountable. Journal of Marketing, 59, 58–70.

Venkatesh, V. (2000). Determinants of perceived ease of use: Integrating control, intrinsic

Appendix 1. Constructs and items

tasks (Lee et al., 2002)

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