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Information technology and the autonomy–control duality: toward a theory

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Abstract

We examine the relationship between firms’ human resources (HR) practices and their information technology (IT) practices, focusing on the dichotomy between autonomy and control. We define facilitating HR practices as those that exhibit the following characteristics: worker autonomy, connectedness, learning, valuing individuals, trust, and flexibility in business processes. We then characterize facilitating IT practices, which are practices that facilitate employee collaboration, autonomy, and wider access to information. We contrast these categories of practice to traditional HR and monitoring IT, respectively. Drawing from theories of complementarities and configuration, we propose that alignment between HR and IT strategies originates at the level of individual practices. We consider the effects of this alignment on worker performance. We then ground our discussion in exploratory empirical and qualitative results.

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Notes

  1. In the context of Miles et al. [57] work, the human resources model was considered the more innovative form of HR in comparison to the more traditional human relations model.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Special Issue co-editors (Chris Forman, Hemant Bhargava, Robert Kauffman and D. J. Wu), the Associate Editor, and two anonymous referees for their comments to improve this paper. We also thank Nigel Melville, and seminar participants at Ross School of Business. Financial support was provided in part by NSF IGERT grant no. 0114368, the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, and the Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman fellowship at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

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  1. Business Information Technology, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, 701 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1234, USA

    Ali Tafti & M. S. Krishnan

  2. Decision and Information Technologies, R. H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, 4324 Van Munching Hall, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Sunil Mithas

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  1. Ali Tafti
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Correspondence to Ali Tafti.

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Tafti, A., Mithas, S. & Krishnan, M.S. Information technology and the autonomy–control duality: toward a theory. Inf Technol Manage 8, 147–166 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-007-0014-x

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