How Does Practicing HR Analytics Establish HRM Credibility? An Epistemic Practice Approach

Abstract

Whether HR Analytics (HRA), i.e., the processing of (big) data to optimize HRM decisions and interventions, promotes HRM credibility in organizations remains a puzzling issue in extant literature. Framing HRA as epistemic practice, we attend to the question how HR practitioners establish HRM credibility by practicing HRA. Drawing on observational and interview data from a case study of HRA practices at TechCom, a large German multinational company (MNC), we show that establishing credibility is largely a result of accumulating, integrating, and translating expertise distributed across the organization, which enables practitioners creating relevant insights and demonstrating HRM’s value added to its stakeholder. Within these practices, we identify epistemic alignment, i.e., aligning to HR stakeholders’ perception of business reality as well as to norms of knowledge creation when creating analytical outputs, as the main mechanism behind establishing credibility. At the same time, our analysis uncovers HRA practitioners’ need for handling a range of contingencies, i.e., compliance issues, internal dependencies, and political tensions, constraining them from fully exploiting the potentials of HRA. Highlighting the role of dashboard-building in establishing HRM credibility, our findings illustrate HRA is a deeply sociomaterial process in which knowledge and its presentation are constantly negotiated.