Call for papers:

Evidence-Based e-HRM?

Towards rigorous and relevant e-HRM research

According to practical as academic surveys the adoption of electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM) massively forges ahead. Despite of evident progresses in the recent past research on e-HRM still is in a status of nascency [e.g. 9]. Due to its very nature e-HRM constitutes a multi-disciplinary research endeavour that mandatorily refers to managerially oriented disciplines, such as Human Resources (HR) research, as well as to technologically oriented disciplines, such as Information Systems (IS) research. As a major debate in both areas the so called “rigor vs. relevance” discussion refers to a major divide between practitioner and academics knowledge interests in HR [e.g. 5, 8] as in IS research [e.g. 1, 2]. Academic research has established its own, well-founded standards of producing rigorous knowledge concerning HR and IS and apply these standards in their ongoing production of academic knowledge. Practitioners however are mostly uninterested in, or worse, even frustrated from this knowledge that is obviously not relevant for them. Apparently, practitioners hence act based on “home-made” knowledge offered by journalists and consultants that obviously is more useful for them. Academics however, commonly disdain such practical knowledge as not rigorous, since being voguish, anecdotal, non-theoretical, unreliable, etc. In sum, the rigor vs. relevance discussion implies that research and practice clearly fall apart.

Experiencing this situation as insufficient, there are diverse suggestions how research could be made more relevant, whereas the concept of “Evidence Based Management (EBM)” constitutes a prominent movement. Basically, EBM refers to the translation of evident knowledge revealed by research into organizational practice by practitioners, thereby explicitly aiming at appropriate syntheses of academic and practical knowledge interests. Academics then should provide an “evidence-base” of well-proven knowledge that is useful and usable for practitioners that hence can improve their work by managing in an evidence based way [e.g. 7]. Again, EBM is discussed for both key areas of e-HRM research, HR [e.g. 3] as well as IS [e.g. 4]. Hence, EBM may represent a valuable concept to prevent the currently emerging e-HRM research area from replicating the research-practice divide by producing rigorous but irrelevant results. However, being far from constituting a well established practice of academic practitioner-cooperation, the EBM concepts poses numerous challenges on both involved parties. Concerning e-HRM research, the major challenge refers to the establishment of an adequate “evidence base” that e-HRM practitioners will actually perceive as both useful and easy to use. Complicating the endeavour, such an evidence-base should mandatorily consider the multi-disciplinary nature of e-HRM, i.e. refer to both technologically oriented “design research” as managerially oriented “usage research” [6] while carefully considering possible interrelations and intersections of both areas.

So as to meet this challenge, the “Third Academic Workshop on European e-HRM” applies to “Evidence Based e-HRM” and welcomes contributions that broadly deal with this topic. In particular the workshop aims at

•  method(olog)ical contributions (methodical foundations and examples of evidence-based e-HRM, e.g. joint academic and practitioner research approaches such as action research; innovative multi-disciplinary research designs in e-HRM such as participative prototyping; methodical possibilities and constrains of EBM; etc.)

•  theoretical and conceptual contributions (foundations, explanations, and conceptualizations of evidence-based e-HRM, e.g. explanations of design-usage interrelations in e-HRM; concepts of e-HRM EBM; theories of technological “design”, theories of managerial “usage”, etc.)

•  empirical contributions (contributions to the “evidence-base” of e-HRM, e.g. studies concerning the development processes; implementation and adoption studies; ascertaining of consequences; meta-studies and reviews of empirical research; etc.)

•  technical contributions (procedures and results of artefact design, e.g. technology innovations such as semantic web or data pattern recognition in e-HRM, innovative HRIS prototypes, concepts of future information systems, etc.)

References:

[1] Applegate, L. M. (1999). Rigor and Relevance in MIS Research – Introduction, MIS Quarterly , 23 (1), 1-2.
[2] Benbasat, I. & Zmud, R. W. (1999). Empirical Research in Information Systems: The Practice of Relevance. MIS Quarterly , 23 (1), 3-16.
[3] Briner, R. B. (2000). Evidence-based Human Resource Management. In Trinder, L. & Reynolds, S. (Eds.), Evidence-based Practice: A Critical Appraisal . London: Blackwell Science, 184–211.
[4] Dyba, T., Kitchenham, B. A., Jorgensen, M. (2005): Evidence-Based Software Engineering for Practitioners. IEEE Software , 22 (1), 58-65.
[5] Guest, D. E. (2007): Don't Shoot the Messenger: A Wake Up Call for Academics. Academy of Management Journal , 50 (5), 1020-1026.
[6] Hevner, A. R., March, S. T., Park, J., Ram, S. (2004): Design Science in Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly , 28 (1), 75-106.
[7] Pfeffer, J., Sutton, R. I. (2006): Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management . Harvard Business School Press.
[8] Rynes, S. L. (2007): Tackling the “Great Divide” between Research Production and Dissemination in Human Resource Management. Academy of Management Journal , 50 (5), 985-986.
[9] Strohmeier, S. (2007). Research in e-HRM: Review and Implications, Human Resource Management Review , 17 (1), 19-37.

Printable version of the Call for Papers

Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. Best papers will be invited for publication in an international journal.

Papers are reviewed double-blind. The review criteria are as follows:

•  Fit with Call for Papers
•  Fit with format requirements
•  Quality of methodical, theoretical, empirical, or technical framework
•  Clarity of presentation
•  Appropriate Language (AE/BE).

Paper Submission must contain:

•  Full paper according to the guidelines and format requirements demanded in the paper template.

Please submit full papers until Sunday 17 January 2010,
as word-file (Microsoft 97 or later) or pdf-file via e-mail to

Mrs. Anke Diederichsen (a.diederichsen@mis.uni-saarland.de)

You will receive notification on acceptance until Monday 01 March 2010.