Business, Information Technology, and Human Resource Strategy Alignment

Business, Information Technology, and Human Resource Strategy Alignment

Bettina Staudinger (University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Austria), Herwig Ostermann (University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Austria) and Roland Staudinger (University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Austria)
Copyright: © 2009 |Pages: 7
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-883-3.ch017

Abstract

Businesses are subject to a constant process of change irrespective of whether this change is intended or not. Along with incorporating basic strategic management ideas into overall business thinking in the 1980s, companies worldwide have tried to influence these change processes as well as determine their corresponding objectives and underlying decisions on a time-axis and have hence taken efforts to methodically anticipate organization evolution (Hamel & Prahalad, 1994; Porter, 1980). Depending on the size and industry of the company, this strategic approach to corporate management may be highly complex as the intended anticipation of the company’s future development demands considering periods of time instead of single dates and furthermore involves integrating variants, prospects and threats in order to increase the company’s capability of action (Chakravarthy, 1986; Kappler, 1995; Perrow, 1984; Steinmann & Schreyögg, 2000).
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Background

The question of the interdependency between HRM strategy, business strategy, and overall corporate performance has been widely discussed by academics as well as practitioners with special regard given to technical support functions of ERP and other business information systems (Florkowski & Olivas-Luján, 2006). As far as a HR context is concerned, challenges involved with the process of business re-engineering appear to be of particular interest (Lai & Mahapatra, 2004), as driven by globalization, not only international demands on corporate strategic planning have to be regarded, but also HR policy and therefore technical HR support functions and decision-supportive expert systems are recognized and discussed as relevant key success factors (Wang, 2005).

By this higher level of required differentiation and new strategic demands throughout the whole strategic planning process more complex business strategies become necessary. Implementing these complex sets of (sub-)strategies can be carried out efficiently, if an integrative coordination of the individual processes, decisions and business areas accounts for the organization’s functionality in context with (sub-)strategies and supportive information systems (Shih & Chiang, 2005).

Key Terms in this Chapter

Strategic Management: Deals with business development and the future realization of business chances.

Human resource management: Includes all company activities to provide itself with staff in needed quantity and quality including administration.

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