Assessing information technology capability vs. human resource information system utilization

The ever-increasing capabilities of human resource information technology (HRIT) and human resource information systems (HRIS) have presented HR departments with an opportunity to generate and analyze vast amounts of employee information that could potentially be used for strategic decision-making purposes and to add value to the HR department and ultimately the entire organization. Research in this area has frequently highlighted that most organizations merely deploy HRIT to automate routine administrative tasks. In general, these studies assume the existence of IT capabilities and sophistication without further investigating what these consist of and how or whether existing IT capabilities could be related to the different uses of HR information, that is, strategic decision-making as opposed to automation. In this article, we introduce and discuss a model that aids the categorization of firms regarding their HRIT capabilities vs. their use of HR information. Furthermore, we will explore the factors that determine the utilization of HR information for strategic decision-making purposes.