Abstract

HR Analytics (HRA) are said to create value when providing analytical outputs that are relevant to decision-makers’ immediate business issues. While extant research on HRA attributes success (or lack thereof) in providing business relevant outputs to the presence or absence of particular skills and resources, we know little about how practitioners actually mobilize these skills and resources in daily practice. Drawing on observational and interview data from a case study of an HRA team, we identify boundary spanning, customizing dashboards, and speaking a language of numbers as three epistemic practices in which team members combine and mobilize a particular set of skills and resources that allows them to accomplish epistemic alignment, i.e. aligning to decision-makers’ perception of business reality when creating analytical outputs. Epistemic alignment enables the team members to produce complex analytical outputs while at the same time staying close to the decision-makers’ immediate business problems. At the same time, team members are capable of accounting for conditions in the broader organizational context, such as compliance issues, dependencies, political tensions, and a prevailing data-driven decision culture. Our findings contribute to knowledge on how organizations can build effective HRA and how advanced forms of digitalization transform the work of HRM in contemporary organizations.

摘要

据说人力资源分析 (HRA) 在提供与决策者的直接业务问题相关的分析输出时可以创造价值。虽然现有的 HRA 研究将在提供业务相关输出方面的成功（或缺乏）归因于特定技能和资源的存在与否，但我们对从业者如何在日常实践中实际调动这些技能和资源知之甚少。利用来自 HRA 团队案例研究的观察和访谈数据，我们将跨界、定制仪表板和使用数字语言确定为三种认知实践，在这些实践中，团队成员结合并动员一组特定的技能和资源，使他们能够完成认知对齐，即在创建分析输出时与决策者对业务现实的看法保持一致。认知一致性使团队成员能够产生复杂的分析输出，同时与决策者的直接业务问题保持密切联系。同时，团队成员能够考虑更广泛的组织环境中的条件，例如合规性问题、依赖性、政治紧张局势和盛行的数据驱动决策文化。我们的发现有助于了解组织如何建立有效的 HRA 以及先进的数字化形式如何改变当代组织中的 HRM 工作。