Employees’ Behavioral Intention to Adopt E-HRM System- An Approach to Extend Technology Acceptance Model

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the Information Technology (IT) sector employees’ behavioral intention towards the adoption of Electronic Human Resource Management (E-HRM) with the help of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in the context of Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approachThe data for this study was collected through a structured questionnaire from 130 employees of IT sector in Bangladesh. The research model was developed based on the TAM theory with three external variables (organizational resources competency, organizational innovativeness and employee technical competency). The TAM theory extended by showing a direct relationship between organizational innovativeness and behavioral intention to adopt E-HRM. The data is analyzed by using SPSS 25. Multiple regression analysis was employed to examine the predictors and their relationships with behavioral intention to adopt E-HRM. FindingsThe results of the study showed that the respondents have a positive intention towards adopting E-HRM system. All three external variables have different effects on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Most of the relationships are quite significant. Moreover, a strong direct relationship was found between organizational innovativeness and behavioral intention regarding EHRM adoption. Research limitationsThe dearth of empirical studies and to better understand the factors that influence the intention of employees towards E-HRM adoption in organizations is the main limitation of the study. Thus it is suggested to use more representative variables with a greater sample size in further studies. The study also had a geographical limitation. Practical implicationsThe research findings can provide an insight to all those business organizations who are planning to adopt E-HRM system and the human resource managers can use the results as an opportunity to develop HRM functions through E-HRM adoption. Originality/valueThis research contributes to the body of knowledge as it measures the employee intention towards E-HRM adoption by analyzing the influence of several factors thus enabling similar organizations to produce more vigorous proposals for E-HRM adoption.


Introduction
The adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) has brought a significant change in the management of business activities as well as in management records and procedures (Winarto,

Organizational Innovativeness (OIN)
Organizational innovativeness refers to accept new ideas or doing something unique or receptive about new way of doing things or transferring and applying a new thought to business activities (Ruel et al., 2004;Hurley and Hult, 1998). Basically, E-HRM is the combination of traditional HR practices along with modern equipped computer-network systems. So, adoption of E-HRM system considered to be an innovation approach by business organizations (Parry and Wilson, 2009). Thus, IT adoption is ultimately influenced by the institutional intention of innovativeness (Bal etal., 2012;Strohmeier et al., 2009). E-HRM consists of some new applications for organizations which may include number of technological tools and software in the achievement of HRM activities (Lopez and Masson, 1997;Hong et al., 2008;Ho, 2010). It was found that enterprises which are innovative and open to change are more fascinated in adopting E-HRM system than other organizations (Museum et al., 2015;Carlson and O'Cass 2010).

Organizational Resources Competency (ORC)
Organizational resources such as software, hardware, technical infrastructure and financial resources found to be an essential element to perform the functions of E-HRM (Hooi, 2006;Cardy and Miller, 2005;Sanjeev and Makkar, 2014). The cost of E-HRM implementation, technical support fitting the requirement, software and hardware maintenance are considered the most important resources for E-HRM adoption Islam, 2016). In absence of the supportive resources, the workers might encounter difficulties which may negatively affect their intention regarding the adoption of IT (Igbaria et al., 1997;Schaupp et al., 2010). On the other hand, lack of organizational infrastructure may cause discomfort and anxiety among individuals which may prevent the adoption of technology (Sandberg and Wahlberg, 2006). According to Mathieson and Chin (2001), IT usage level is more on those organizations which have satisfactory amount of resources than other organizations.

Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was developed by Fred Davis in the year of 1989. Throughout the edges, TAM became one of the major influential extensions of Ajzen and Fishbein's Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Mostly this theory is employed to know how general folks are perceived the technology or information system and their behavioral intention to accept and use of that specific technology or information system. According to Venkatesh (2000), TAM is widely used for understanding the users' behavioral intention to accept and use of specific technology or information system. Hence, Perceived Usefulness (PU) was defined as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance" and Perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) was defined as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort" and the Behavioral intention to use indicates an individual's willingness to try or how much he or she is determined about accepting new technology or innovation (Davis, 1989). From TAM, behavioral intention towards a new technology acceptance by an individual jointly influenced by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Besides, the TAM hypothesizes a direct link between perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use which depicts that a user will find more useful the technology that he or she finds easier to use and at the same time, if the user finds the new technology required less effort or easy functioning then he or she will consider the new technology as useful (Bueno and Salmeron, 2008).

Relationship among the Research Variables
Employee technical competency has a positive relationship with adoption of E-HRM system in an organization. If the employees are not competent enough to use the technology, it will be much harder for them to understand its usefulness and thus adopt it properly (Bamel et al., 2014;Armstrong et al., 2005). Similarly, positive relationship is found between the use of electronic systems and organizational innovativeness (DA, 2019;Foster and Cornford, 1992). Organizational innovation has a direct and strong influence on the behavioral intention to adopt specific technology (Agag, G. et al., 2016;Hahn, et al., 2014). Thus, innovative culture of the organization has positive impact on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavioral intention to use a new technology (Chung et al., 2015;Parry et al., 2009;Oswal et al., 2015). Apparently, organizational resource competency seems to be an important factor in case of IT adoption (Oswal and Narayanappa, 2015). The perception of the adequacy of the institutional resources positively affects perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavioral intention to adopt of E-HRM applications or system (Hooi, 2006). According to Esen and Ozbag (2014), organizational resource competency, organizational innovativeness and employee technical competency all have a significant and positive effect on each TAM variables (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and behavioral intention to use). A significant number of researchers have found that perceived ease of use has positive effect on perceived usefulness (Venkatesh and Davis, 2000;Mun et al., 2006;Fu et al., 2006;Lee et al., 2007). Individuals should believe E-HRM applications became usefulness to them due to free of effort and easy functioning (Gallego et al., 2008;Esen and Özbağ, 2014). Moreover, it is found that both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use has positive effect on behavioral intention to use E-HRM practices in organizations in the future (Hong and Tam, 2006;Lee et al., 2006;Ghorbani et al., 2011).

Research Method Data Sources and Sample
The results are mainly based on primary data. Secondary sources has been used to construct the literature and other theoretical parts. The data for this study was collected by structured questionnaire through random sampling from the employees of IT sector of Bangladesh. A total of 157 questionnaires were distributed and after screening all questionnaires we have got 130 complete and usable questionnaires. Consequently, valid questionnaires were 82.8% of the total respondents for this study.

Questionnaire
The questionnaire was segmented into two parts, where the first part followed by the demographic factors of the respondents and second part consists of both the independent and dependent variables of this study. To measure the opinion of the respondents regarding E-HRM adoption, all items were measured through using a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 ('strongly disagree') to 5 ('strongly agree').

Research Model
This study is based upon TAM theory. The three external variables (Extracted from literature review) used in the model are Employee Technical Competency (ETC), Organizational Innovativeness (OIN) and Organizational Resource Competency (ORC). These three variables directly linked with Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and also PU and PEOU linked with the behavioral intention to adopt E-HRM system. The TAM theory extended by showing a direct relationship of Organizational Innovativeness (OIN) with behavioral intention to adopt E-HRM. The proposed research model split into four models. In the first model, PU is denoted as dependent variable whereas ETC, OIN and ORC are respectively considered as independent variables. In model 2, PEOU is considered as dependent variable and ETC, OIN and ORC are respectively considered as independent variables. In model 3, PU is dependent variable and PEOU is independent variable. In model 4, BI is dependent variable while PU, PEOU and OIN are respectively followed as independent variables.

Analysis
Data analysis was carried out with SPSS 25 version software. First, Principal Component Factor Analysis was carried out to test the reliability of the questionnaire. Secondly, descriptive statistics done through using demographic variables. Thirdly, Correlation were computed for all independent and dependent variables to assess the internal relationships among variables. Finally, multiple regression analysis was employed to measure the significant effect of independent variable (s) on dependent variable.  Table 1: Descriptive Statistics   Table 1, demonstrates the respondents' demographic profile of this study. The number of male respondents (78.46%) were higher than female respondents (21.54%). In terms of age, the majority of the respondents were from 25-29 years old (35.38%). Whereas, less than 20 years were 12.30%, 21-24 years were 33.84%, 30-34 years were 13.08% and finally, 35 years or more were 5.38%. On the other hand, most of the respondents came from graduate background (53.08%), then post graduate (43.07%) and lastly under graduate (3.85%). In this study, majority of the respondents were from private sector IT organizations (68.46%), then from government sector (14.61%), semi government sector (10.00%) and autonomous sector (6.92%). Finally, in terms of the respondents' experience of doing the job, mostly were from 2 to 3 years constituting 36.92%, the percentage of 4 to 5 years were 32.30%, less than one year were 16.92% and 6 years and more were 15.38%.    Table 3, represents the corrections among all the constructs of this study. The result revealed that behavioral intention has positive correlation with perceived ease of use (.498 ** ) or 49.8% at 99 percent confident interval and significant at the 0.01 level (.000). On the other hand, behavioral intention also positively correlated with other constructs respectively as perceived usefulness (.518 ** or 51.8%, .000), employee technical competency (.492 ** or 49.2%, .000), organizational resource competency (.567 ** or 56.7%, .000) and organizational innovativeness (.373 ** or 37.3%, .000). In addition, perceived ease of use is positively correlated with perceived usefulness (.612 ** or 61.2%, .000), employee technical competency (.479 ** or 47.9%, .000), organizational resource competency (.417 ** or 41.7 %, .000) and organizational innovativeness (.467 ** or 46.7%, .000). Moreover, perceived usefulness positively correlated with employee technical competency (.693 ** or 69.3%, .000), organizational resource competency (.617 ** or 61.7%, .000) and organizational innovativeness (.284 ** or 28.4%, .000). Besides, employee technical competency has positive association with organizational resource competency (.688 ** or 68.8%, .000) and organizational innovativeness (.188 * or 18.8%, .000). Finally, organizational resource competency is positively associated with organizational innovativeness (.359 ** or 35.9%, .000).

Discussion
This study aims to investigate the IT sector employees' adoption intention of Electronic Human Resource Management (E-HRM) in Bangladesh with the help of Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989). Output of the study helps to cross check the established hypothesis and to make clear conception over the relationships among perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), organizational innovativeness (OIN) and behavioral intention (BI) to adopt E-HRM in Bangladesh. Based on the output of this study, it was found that employee technical competency and organizational resource competency has positive and significant effect on perceived usefulness. Which seems similar to the prior research findings of (Esen and Özbağ, 2014). On the other hand, this study failed to prove the hypothesis between organizational innovativeness and perceived usefulness. This result seems alike to the research work of Lee (2020). This is different from findings of earlier studies. To justify the insignificant relationship, we can say that, usefulness of a technology may not always encourage the organization to be innovative (Martin, Alexander, Reddington, and Pate, 2006). This study also confirmed that employee technical competency has a statistical significant relationship with perceived ease of use. This result is consistent with the result of (Esen and Özbağ, 2014). This study also established that, there is a positive and significant relationship between perceived ease of use and organizational innovativeness. This result also support prior research findings between organizational innovativeness and perceived ease of use (Lee, 2020). Moreover, output of the study showed that there is no significant relationship between organizational resource competency and perceived ease of use. This finding is dissimilar to the finding of (Esen and Özbağ, 2014). To justify the insignificant relationship, we can say that, as the study conducted on IT sector organization which are already technologically well equipped with IT trained employees so, the respondents may not feel any interconnection between organizational resource competencies with perceived ease of use. Besides, it was found that perceived ease of use has significant relationship with perceived usefulness. This result has found similar to those of previous research works (Thiruselvi et al., 2013;Erdogmus and Esen, 2011;Lee, 2020). In addition, this study analysis verified that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use has significant effect on behavioral intention to adopt E-HRM. Former studies had proved the same result (Erdogmus and Esen, 2011;Esen and Özbağ, 2014;Thiruselvi et al., 2013). Furthermore, analysis of this study also confirmed that organizational innovativeness has a significant effect on behavioral intention to adopt E-HRM system. This hypothesis was supported by the studies (Lin et al., 2020;Kin et al., 2018). With regard to the effects of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and organizational innovativeness on E-HRM adoption intention, analysis showed that perceived usefulness has higher significant effect on E-HRM adoption intention than organizational innovativeness and perceived ease of use. This study also confirmed that organizational innovativeness has greater significant impact on adoption intention of E-HRM by IT sector employees rather than perceived ease of use.

Conclusion
E-HRM improves HR efficiency and influence HR strategy in any organization. This study takes an initial step to validate the intention towards adopting E-HRM by means of TAM. The findings of this study will help organizations to understand the employees' intention towards the adoption of E-HRM and all the studied variables are important determinants in terms of improving E-HRM adoption. Most importantly, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavioral intention to use are critical in E-HRM adoption. In order to make users continue the usage of E-HRM in their organizations, management should look into how to make it useful and easy to use for the employees. This will change the users' intention toward the acceptance and continuance usage of the system. In concluding this paper, it can be said that since intention influences technology adoption, organizations should be aware of this relationship when initiating information system. In other words, organizations must adopt their strategy to increase technology acceptance on the basis of users' preferences. However, this study investigated a limited number of variables to elucidate employee intention towards adopting E-HRM system. Future research is required to uncover other new variables of E-HRM adoption in the different industry settings by using well-designed research model(s). The study has been conducted on Bangladesh and may bring different types of result in case of other developing countries. Although there are some limitations, it is hoped that the first step taken in studying E-HRM adoption intention in this study is significant for further justification.

Research Contribution
This research paper has proposed a set of factors based on TAM which influences the intention towards E-HRM adoption. The proposed research model tried to extend TAM and explore the relationships of the research variables with behavioral intention to adopt E-HRM. The addition of these variables (Organizational Resource Competency, Organizational Innovativeness and Employee Technical Competency) in the theory will contribute significantly in organizational decisions as they are very important for current phenomena in case of E-HRM adoption. This will definitely advance the existing knowledge.
On the other hand, many organizations in Bangladesh and other countries are facing several difficulties and resistance in E-HRM adoption. Most of them have no sufficient knowledge about the preparedness to adopt new technology on HRM functions. The variables used in this study are very important to convince the user to adopt and use E-HRM. Thus, it has important implications for