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Management Learning
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A Knowledge-based View of Agenda-formation in the Development of Human Resource Information Systems

Carole Tansley

Department of HRM, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Sue Newell

Department of Management, Bentley College, USA

Human resource information systems (HRIS) can potentially transform human resourcing tasks, but conflicts between HR and IS managers can hinder HRIS design and implementation projects. The ethnographic narrative in this article presents an HR and an IS project manager initially conflicting during the ‘agenda formation’ stage of an HRIS project in a transnational organization because they took different perspectives (as evidenced by their use of different heuristic and generative metaphors), thus constraining progress. However, from politically oriented public and private rhetorical activities, new knowledge emerged following an ‘epiphany of knowing’ experienced by the HR manager and progress was made. It is suggested that in managers' rhetorical activities both generative and heuristic metaphors can aid ‘relational knowing’, which is an important precursor to situated learning. However, care must be taken to recognize the political aspects of such processes and the potential hegemony of different knowledge disciplines in IS project development work.

Key Words: human resource information systems • collaborative leadership • situated learning • ethnographic narrative • rhetorical activity • metaphor • epiphany • organizational politics

Management Learning, Vol. 38, No. 1, 95-119 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1350507607073028
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