Decision support model for employee selection: A strategic human resource management (HRM) perspective

Abstract

Human resource has been regarded as an important factor for an organization to gain competitive advantages. Employee selection is an essential decision especially to intellectual property technology service industry, since “human” is the theoretical basis of establishing the important assets for an organization. The decision makers should select the specialists who best match the needs of the organizational strategy by contemporaneously considering multiple and interdependent evaluation criteria. Thus far, literatures detailing employee selection problems assumed that the criteria for evaluating specialists are independent and ignore the strategic viewpoint. Since the process for employee selection is so complicated, an effective tool, especially for dealing with interdependence among criteria, is needed. Based on the viewpoint of strategic human resource management and resource-based theory, the study aimed to develop a systematic decision support model that combines an Analytic network process (ANP) with an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for employee selection decisions. To implement the model, an empirical study for the intellectual property technology service industry in Taiwan was conducted. Moreover, an empirical example of specialist selection for company G demonstrated the computational process and effectiveness of the proposed model. The results calculated by the decision support model were confirmed to be a useful point of reference for decision makers during practical implementation. Key words: Analytic network process (ANP), analytic hierarchy process (AHP), employee selection, human resource management (HRM), resource-based theory.