Technology and the HR field: The Growth of Human Resource Information Systems

The aim of this paper is to review both the professional and academic development of human resource information systems (HRIS), and to critically evaluate its growth, to recommend methods to move research forward. In this context, the relationship between technology development and the HR field, is examined through four key periods of technology namely, client server, mainframe, cloud-based, ERP and web-based systems. For each period, this paper elaborates on the HR practices and how the need to apply these systems has led to the development of the HR field. Furthermore, the HRIS subfield and its relationship are examined with the technological developments in the HR field. The findings reveal that, the majority of the studies on the application of technology to support HR, has been conducted in t he last 20 to 25 years, as a response to the use of the web, as a medium for delivering HRIS. The result is achieved through dis cussing how researchers from the information systems (IS) and HR fields, coordinate and cooperate with each other to support HRIS development