The incorporation of digital human resources (HR) technologies has emerged as a key force behind organizational change in today's quickly changing global environment. This chapter takes a close look at the potential and problems that come up when deploying digital HR technologies in the special environment of developing nations. The first point made in the chapter emphasizes how transformative digital HR solutions can be, from easier hiring processes and more employee engagement to data-driven decision-making. The chapter then turns its attention to emerging nations, where issues including socioeconomic inequality, poor infrastructure, and varied cultural values create particular obstacles to the adoption of technology. An in-depth examination of roadblocks such as a lack of digital infrastructure, a lack of technical awareness, and reluctance to change within established organizational structures reveals the central topic of obstacles. These elements not only prevent the seamless integration of digital HR systems but also force the creation of context-specific implementation strategies. The chapter also highlights a range of promising opportunities among these difficulties. Developing nations may transform HR procedures and promote more inclusivity and accessibility by embracing digital HR solutions. The opportunity to enhance personnel management and spur productivity and creativity lies in improved data analytics and automation. The chapter also emphasizes the importance of digital platforms in democratizing HR services and enabling both businesses and employees to succeed in a changing labor market. This chapter offers a thorough framework for comprehending the complex dynamics of implementing digital HR technology by drawing on a variety of case studies and scholarly ideas. In order to fully realize the revolutionary potential of digital HR technologies in the distinctive setting of developing countries, it needs a sophisticated approach that strikes a balance between technology improvements and local contextualization. This chapter is an excellent resource for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers navigating the uncharted territory of digital HR adoption in various socio-economic contexts as firms try to remain competitive and relevant.
TopIntroduction
Contemporary organizations are strongly affected by digital “(r)evolution” in many different ways and on multiple levels. The effects of digitalization directly impact all the processes in an organization internally and in relation to external stakeholders (Bajer, 2017; Horváth et al., 2019). In that sense, digitalization is a process of utmost importance for economies and societies which started a long time ago, receiving forceful acceleration by development and adoption of newest technologies such as data mining, Internet of Things, Artificial intelligence, Blockchain technology, Big Data Analytics, etc. (Kagermann, 2015; Schwanholz et al., 2018; Rachinger et al., 2019).
According to previous research, digitalization has been studied mainly in the light of its influence and consequences of its adoption on customer preferences, buying behaviour, marketing, and business performance, while research on how it affects an organization’s internal processes and behavior especially in terms of implication to human resources management was fairly seldom (Burchardt et al., 2019; Branca et al., 2020).
Rapid development and adoption of technologies such as Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, Mobile Apps, Social, Big Data Analytics and IoT help organizations to exploit characteristics of such transformative technologies in terms of improving business agility, accelerating innovation and transforming business processes, and introducing new business models (Bajer, 2017; Schwanholz et al., 2018; Rachinger et al., 2019; Zehir et al., 2020).
The adoption of new technologies and digitalization of organizational processes have forced the rapid evolution of HRM practices, requiring the development and adoption of new HR competencies, new forms of employment, and agile HR processes (Kagermann, 2015; Horváth et al., 2019). In that respect and to enable and accommodate rapid technological change and development, organizations are expected to develop procedures and establish practices for a continuous reappraisal of employee competencies, and also to introduce new forms of work organization (Sakellaridis et al., 2011; Götz et al., 2020).
Most of today’s HR practices are developed stable and long-lasting employment forms and it can be challenging for an organization to apply those practices to new forms of employment such as permanently changing conditions of contracts based on project principles (Demartini et al., 2018; Cichosz et al., 2020). Thereby, as a result of the adoption of accelerated technological changes, those increasing new flexible employment forms affect also competence and career development practices representing the changeable work environment (Rachinger et al., 2019).