ABSTRACT
It is interesting to look at some of the similarities between the two aids to strategic and tactical business success – information technology and human resource management (HRM). Both have struggled to be seen and used as a strategic and in some cases even as a tactical resource but, now into the new millennium, both appear to have achieved this recognition at last – at least in the more go-ahead organizations! In the early days of computers the majority of the information systems to be computerized were the financial systems. Until recently in many organizations, HRM was seen as primarily an administrative function, keeping the personnel files and perhaps in some cases administering the wages, company cars, etc. A salutary example of this was supplied to us by Tony Reid during our research for Project Management: The people challenge (Bee and Bee, London, IPD, 1997). Reid was at that time chairman of one of the major committees of the Association of Project Management. He quoted from his wide experience that HR staff were not usually involved in major activities on forming project teams, such
as the selection of the project leader, saying that HR staff’s traditional involvement on project teams was:
It was not surprising that many personnel departments, trying valiantly to cope with all downsizing, resizing, right-sizing, etc., were overwhelmed with their paperwork and always so far behind the strategic issues facing the business. The emphasis has been, and still is to some extent, on coping with the present rather than focusing on the future.
