Human Resources Information Systems: A sociotechnical perspective

This study analyses Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) implementations by taking into account both social and technical factors and relationships among them which is the sociotechnical perspective. The scope of the study involves organizations having more than a hundred employees and an annual revenue of at least 100 million USD. Field research used a questionnaire for survey to obtain responses from human resources professionals and resulted with thirty one valid questionnaires and a return rate of 40.79%. The research indicated no statistically significant difference between Information Technology and Human Resources Departments with respect to management of HRIS implementation projects. Although, social challenges are also effective barriers the most influential barrier in front of HRIS implementation projects is software usability which is a technical barrier. Sociotechnical approach increases the success of HRIS implementation projects. The strongest contribution to sociotechnical perspective comes from business planning and vision as a success factor and increases the general success. The most important outcome of the research is that sociotechnical approach increases the performance of an HRIS implementation project both in terms of specific success criteria such as efficiency, effectiveness, system usage, user satisfaction and technological quality and in terms of general success evaluation. © 2010 Asian Network for Scientific Information.