MANAGING TECHNOLOGY AND PEOPLE: THE GREGORY FRAMEWORK APPROACH
Prof. (Dr) Pralay Kumar Ghosh Director Suryadatta Institute of Business Management & Technology (SIBMT) Bavdhan (BK), Pune 411 021 Mobile No. 09823025076 e-mail: pralaykghosh@hotmail.com
Abstract This concept paper discusses as to how Human Resources Management has evolved from being a Personnel and Administration function in the 1950’s to that of a highly modernized Management of People as Assets. It is equally essential to note the evolution of Technology and how managing this goes in conjunction with People... In the context of technology, people play a major role at various stages of technology, right from its identification to its assimilation and implementation. The future holds great importance for HRM’s role in the strategic business partnership with the organization, and for combating this challenge, there is an increasing need for technology to be inserted on its daily operations and on its decision-making considerations. It is an individual who thinks of an idea, who then wants to convert that idea into something that can impact many others. The process involves technology, as a mean and not an end. The most common example in Technology Management is the principle of adopting the Gregory framework. Paper presented at a National Conference on “Managing Technology and Innovation for Competitive Advantage in Global Business Environment” on February 28th and 29th and March 1, 2012 held at MAEER’S Maharashtra Institute of Technology Department of Management Sciences and Research, Pune
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This framework has five basic processes, each one of those represent a strong role coming from people and so the result desired is directly proportional to the quality of people involved. A review of literature suggests that the future role of HR professionals are going to be dramatically different than what it is today and perhaps, in this changing scenario, the role of technology in general and its application in HR calls for a relook at Gregory framework in developing people who can maximise the potential of latest technology. Managing people and technology go hand in hand. Regardless of what future lies ahead, a good understanding of the role technology plays in supporting human capital management is likely to be a key factor in determining the success of both the HR function and HR professional. Key Words: People, Technology, HRM, Gregory Framework, Future
INTRODUCTION Like every Economic trend in the world, the Human Resource fraternity has seen equal number of trends changing as required in each global economic scenario. From being a Personnel and Administration function in the 1950’s, today Human Resources Management (HRM) has evolved to that of a highly modernized Management of People as Assets possessing many different varieties of competencies and capabilities. In turn, HRM today is helping organisations grow its business and increase its footprint.
Against this backdrop, it is equally essential to note the evolution of Technology and how managing this goes in conjunction with People. In the Indian context, Technology has evolved with the country’s need in being selfreliant and sufficient. Ever since then we have been looking at upgrading technology based on what is available in the global market and the various consumption demands.
People are at the heart of any management, be it quality, financial, technical, design, production, and allied functions. In the context of technology, people play a major role at various stages of technology, right from its identification to its assimilation and implementation. The future holds great importance for HRM’s role in the strategic business partnership with the organization, and for combating this challenge, there is an increasing need for technology to be inserted on its daily operations and on its decision-making considerations. The creation of technology also starts from the person’s mind. It is an individual who thinks of an idea, who then 2
wants to convert that idea into something that can impact many others. The process involves technology, as a mean and not an end.
The most common example in Technology Management is the principle of adopting the Gregory framework (Gregory, 1995). The framework has five basic processes, each one of those represent a strong role coming from people and so the result desired is directly proportional to the quality of people involved. A review of literature suggests that the future role of HR professionals are going to be dramatically different than what it is today and perhaps, in this changing scenario, the role of technology in general and its application in HR calls for a relook at Gregory framework.
LITERATURE REVIEW A number of research studies reveal that during the last decade, the technology has impacted the functions and activities of HRM to a great extent and the process continues.
Working from home or close to home, to travel to work place – be it office or factory, gradually and steadily, we find today a reverse process wherein there is a move for many to work from anywhere including home and people are no longer necessarily anchored to one place. Research studies and surveys confirm that the common factor towards this shift is technology. There exists a rich literature on how technology in general and computer technology in particular, especially the Internet by dissolving borders and creating an interconnected marketplace, apart from business streamlining and an array of communication tools have brought phenomenal changes in the lives of people and that in turn has changed the various functions and activities of human resource management (Ivancevich, 2001).
“It’s not enough for human resource professionals to learn how to operate the newest software and other technologies … Turning raw data into useful information is the real value technology brings to the human resources function by enabling HR practitioners to demonstrate in numbers and, conversely, in dollars, how decisions that affect employees affect the bottom line.” (HR News, September, 2000). The transition to technology calls for a new model of workforce development with people-cantered approach that recognizes employee mobility, competitive pressures, globalization, and the pace of change in valuable technologies and skills (Meeder and Cude 2002) and this is an important issue these days as knowledge management plays a central role (Ardichvili, 2002). Right from recruitment and selection to performance appraisal and compensation management, Human resources (HR) covers various tasks that calls for different skill sets, both quantitative and qualitative in nature (Kenter 2003). In the backdrop of emerging technologies, this raises questions whether these tasks need to be together on organizational plans (Kenter, 2003). 3
The recent studies of HR management and business performances have found that HR’s adopted “high involvement” practices have resulted in “significantly positively associated” “improvement on market value, rate of return on capital employed, revenue growth, revenue-per-employee rate, productivity, product/service quality, and even organizational survival” (Lewin, 2003). The use of technology by HR has proven to assist on the improvement of business performances.
HRs should go above and beyond maintaining a narrow operational focus, view its activities as restricted to the limits of its own organization, or to limit itself to traditional human resource (HR) responsibilities (LengnickHall & Lengnick-Hall, 2003), Towards this involvement of technology, businesses need to adopt an HR philosophy which understands that today’s customers and clients are used to a technological experience, and “The mission of the HR department ought to be to synchronize the employment brand with the customer brand”. In order this to happen, HR should bring the customer’s voice to inside an organization, and accomplishing that, upper management will empower HR to reflect the customer’s “value proposition” (Sartain, 2005)
Noe et al. (2007) claimed that e-businesses creates many challenges for HRM departments because of the fast pace of changes on information technology. HRMs are required to continually update their skills requirements and then recruit and train people to meet these requirements. Technology is here and will continue to progress. To understand the role technology plays on today’s HRM we first have to understand business technology (Luck, 2010) It is evident from the foregoing that HRM has revolutionised based on the market’s demand. Market demands have led to technology acquisition and its management. One needs to always attribute these changes to the changing nature of jobs. We come from a generation of jobs like doctors, engineers, and chartered accountants to a huge variety of roles. There are functions and departments in organisations that have never existed in the past. All this calls for managing people in diversified roles with diversified technologies.
In the overall context of organisations, managing technology and people are indeed complementary and is extremely important. The benefits of effective management of these two help organisations progress and achieve its set objectives, vision, and results. There is also an emergence of HR technologies that enable better management of people like that of PeopleSoft, ERP, Cloud computing, etc.
EMERGENCE OF TECHNOLOGY IN HR
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The most common technology is Information technology (IT), which has increasingly become an important factor and fundamental to support business processes in organizations. The need for HRs to be more efficient on different areas of competencies and towards this information technology (IT) is fundamental on the strategy for HRM improvement (Cascio, 2005). IT acquisitions are quite productive in supporting transactions and in aiding coordination mechanism provided the organizational resources and business processes are properly aligned with the IT. However, many IT acquisition projects fail due to improper alignment of the business process with IT. Role of human resource (HR) is quite critical to such alignment process. It is important that acquiring organizations display HR capability to support alignment process especially in the pre-acquisition stage to minimize the post-acquisition shocks (Mishra, 2006).
During the post-independence era, the practice of Human Resource Management had further undergone a technological revolution. The era observed how human resources, capital, application of knowledge and information systems took advantages of advanced information technology. The new buzz word that comes into being is that HR no longer looks at administration, but partners with business for fuelling growth, progress and development. This era marks the emergence of a ‘network society’ - a revolution involving the internet and a technological infrastructure for the global economy (Castell 1996, 1997, 1998). This has resulted in a paradigm shift in the way business is conducted today. The concept of outsourcing which is one of the outcomes is used widely today in all functions of management including human resource management. Business organizations are adopting new technology and techniques with the help of trained manpower to produce world class products with utmost customer satisfaction. They are deploying skilled, loyal and committed human resources who are capable of controlling sophisticated and high-tech machines and equipment’s. An integration of new technology and efficient workforce is possible when an organization adopts a strong and progressive human resource approach. (Kumar and Mishra, 2011) (Ghosh, 2011).
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT WITHIN THE TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK Indian business, from its independence in 1947 until the economic liberalization programme of 1991 to postinformation technology resulted in a domestically focused and unique business model. The past sixty years has seen Human Resource functions evolve from being procedural in nature to that of a behavioural one. There are courses and masters specialisation available in the subject with sub-specialisations that indicate the importance and change of the function from its past. While many of these issues continue to haunt business organisations as areas of concern, there has been significant progress, which has been the product of the increase in education, variety of options and specialisations that have come into existence with the opening of the economy and world trade, and availability of talent. The challenge that lies ahead in the HR fraternity is that of selecting the right talent for the right job, ensuring that the job’ output is maximised with the potential it has to offer, and enriching 5
the roles to add value to organisations. Thus, in response to the on-going restructuring, every business organization must draw a set of its own human resource policies and integrate them with the firm’s strategic challenges (Murthy, 2010).
The Gregory Framework was primarily developed keeping in mind technology management. However, this framework has processes, which have an important People role which is most significant to be fulfilled. The five generic processes with the People perspective are explained below:
1. Identification of technologies which are important to the business: when an organisation identifies technology, it needs people who have the right technical acumen, grasping and knowledge of the technology. We still live in a world where a person’s intuition and technical competence judges the value of technology more than theory and the technology itself. Understanding the handling and management of technology is a human effort and needs capable and competent people to look at this. A man’s intelligence generates an idea for new products, which generates the need to identify technology. It has to be finally used by People.
2. Selection of technologies that should be supported by the organisation: Whenever a Technology is selected, the organisation has to keep in mind as to who is going to manage and run this technology. People are a critical deciding factor for this selection, as they must have the competency, aptitude and willingness to support this technology.
3. Assimilation of selected technologies: HR involvement is an important aspect in all the stages of IT acquisition process. In order to ensure a better and effective use of the IT acquired, HR involvement is required the most in the pre-acquisition stage in order to effectively manage subsequent stages. Policy, attitude of strategic decision makers, decision making style in the organization; perception of users on IT (fear of losing importance and/ or anxiety to use technology) also influence end-users in accepting IT. In this paper we discussed a model that an organization can apply to assess its internal preparedness to manage the IT acquisition process.
4. Exploitation of technologies to generate profit and benefits: People manufacture, people plan and people sell. It is the human mind’s intelligence that gets multiple benefits from technology and by doing so one exploits technology best. If people don’t work with technology, then as a standalone no technology can produce any benefits. Generating profits and maximising benefits only enable business improvement and growth, so if people are provided with right training and inputs, with regular enhancement of knowledge and skills, this can help business and the economy prosper. 6
5. Protection of knowledge and expertise: Filing of Patents and intellectual property are all people capabilities and their protection is done such that people can learn and benefit from one’s knowledge. Managing people by giving them the right ambience to develop their intellectual capacity, is a HRM role and also helps protect unique technology in an organisation.
People possess the inherent quality of being intelligent, energised, and full of ideas, skills and talent. It is all these fundamental qualities of a human being that is channelized through proper Human Resource Management. All these further go to substantiate that for HRM to play an active value adding role to managing technology, understanding the technology and its business context is very important. This means being involved in the developing of the strategic objectives of the organisation, absorbing the background of the strategy, the vision and its purpose and mission to achieve, followed by knowledge in its implementation. Technology needs arise out of this and this in turn shall indicate the competencies, skills, manpower required to deploy the technology and reap its benefits.
CONCLUSION Today, as shown in this paper, HRMs are presented with the challenge of becoming more effective and productive, and they are accepting this challenge by turning to technology as a mean to improve their performance; however technology presents its own challenges as well. The role technology plays on HRM is most fundamental when used as part of an organization’s business strategy. There are specific technology designed for HRM decision-making, however the efficiency of these decisions remain dependent on the human training and skills. Technology is incorporated on the fibre of our lives because of its overwhelming presence on e-business, as Internet continues to have an exponential growth.
Regardless of which future lies ahead, a good understanding of the role technology plays in supporting human capital management is likely to be a key factor in determining the success of both the HR function and HR professionals (SHRM, 2008).
To sum up, managing people and technology go hand in hand. They are not supplementary in nature and as organisations evolve to modern techniques of manufacturing, and overall management, it is imperative to develop people who can maximise the potential of latest technology and in this context Gregory framework could be useful.
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References
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