IntroductionAt the beginning of the 21st century, various corporate scandals brought heightened scrutiny of organizations by their internal and external stakeholders (Evans, Novicevic, Buckley, & Buckley, 2008). The increasing pressures stemming from these multiple constituent groups eventually resulted in the U.S. Congress passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002. This legislation was passed with the aim of regaining general confidence of publicly traded firms by mandating greater transparency and more stringent internal controls of critical financial and operational events (BNA, 2006; Donaldson, 2005). In particular, SOX demands strict corporate governance, including the conduct of company executives, auditors (both internal and external), middle and lower-level managers, and financial analysts. The Act's far-reaching tenets have resulted in major changes in organizational functions and processes, not only in publicly traded firms, but also in private companies and non-for-profit organizations that voluntarily followed suit in order to attract quality stakeholders (Fletcher, 2005; Lieber, 2007). For all of these organizations, the more stringent demands of SOX require tighter internal controls, emphasizing the need to implement effective information systems and processes (Sherman, 2005).HR departments have increasingly taken a protagonist role within organizations (Shilpa & Gopal, 2011) and are particularly instrumental in establishing organizational compliance with SOX due to their centrality within the organizational structure (Ready, Novicevic, & Evans, 2009). The purview of HR departments spans throughout the organization and includes the responsibility of establishing and controlling policies and procedures (e.g., compensation and training) directly addressed by SOX. Such boundary-spanning has necessitated the move to electronic human resource management systems within the HR function.Despite the increased public interest (Stone & Dulebohn, 2013), as well as the growing academic literature concerning the benefits of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) (Ruel & van der Kaap, 2012), there is surprisingly little research on the strategic benefits of e- HRM (Marler & Fisher, 2013; Stone & Dulebohn, 2013). E-HRM has been defined as organization-wide information systems (i.e., internet or intranet) that allow stakeholders to access HR information and perform HR functions (Stone & Dulebohn, 2013). While past research studies on SOX compliance have addressed the benefits of implementing organization- wide information systems, little is known specifically about how e-HRM systems enable organizations to integrate HR management with internal controls for compliance with SOX demands. Towards that end, we explain how e-HRM facilitates SOX compliance by assisting HR departments to: 1) pursue more stringently the general guidelines of the new proposed COSO framework (developed by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission for enhancing internal controls - see Appendix) and 2) follow more efficiently the prescriptions offered by Dailey and Brookmire (2005) concerning the role of HR in SOX compliance. Therefore, we contribute to the extant literature by explaining how human resource departments can enhance SOX compliance through the implementation of e-HRM systems.This article is structured as follows: first, we discuss the regulatory framework of organizational conduct and the related implications of SOX for internal controls and HRM policies and practices. Second, we offer a brief overview of the e-HRM literature followed by an explanation of the newly proposed COSO framework and how e-HRM can complement the general guiding principles and contribute to the initiatives of strengthening internal controls. Third, we discuss the five behaviors suggested by Dailey and Brookmire (2005) for how HR departments can enhance SOX compliance and extend their work by explaining how e-HRM can play an instrumental role by making this process more effective and efficient. …