What makes human resource information successful? Managers' perceptions of attributes for successful human resource information

Abstract

Human resource information (HRI) is information such as head count, fluctuation, age distributions or results from employee surveys which is available to an organization. Despite being a high-priority issue for practitioners and researchers, this topic remains far from reaching a level at which the users of HRI – mostly managers and senior executives – are satisfied and perceive HRI as effective and useful for decision making. This is due to a knowledge gap regarding which relevant attributes HRI needs to possess. In order to fill this gap, we built on theoretical arguments from the information systems literature and integrated them into an HRI success model with the key variables ease of use, information quality, perceived usefulness, user information satisfaction and information use. This model was tested among 179 managers in Swiss banks, and structural equation modeling provided clear support for it. In particular, information quality was a key determining factor for both user information satisfaction and information use, and there was a weak link between user information satisfaction and actual HRI use. Both academics and practitioners might benefit from this model by achieving a deeper understanding of the key factors and interdependencies leading to successful HRI.

Keywords:

• ease of use
• human resource information
• information quality
• information satisfaction
• information use
• perceived usefulness