Abstract:
Accelerated investment and innovation in information technology (IT) offers prospects for
conducting business in ways that are radically different from the past. Despite the growing
presence of IT within organizations, however, we do not have a clear understanding of how
IT impacts the role of professionals. We address this issue by investigating how jobs in one
professional occupational segment, human resources (HR) professionals are influenced by ex tensive use of IT within the human resource department. Specifically, we examine how HR
professionals handle HR information as well as the expectations placed on them resulting
from an increased reliance on IT. Our findings suggest that IT enables HR professionals to
more efficiently access and disseminate information while it also influences what is expected
of them. Implications and future directions are discussed.
