Workers and Their Willingness to Learn: Will ICT-Implementation Strategies and HRM Practices Contribute to Innovation?

The article deals with the relationship between the willingness of workers to acquire ICT-competences), the ICT-implementation strategy (to ‘automate’ or ‘to informate’) pursuit by organizations and the HRM practices used by them. Based on a simple conceptual model, we tested three hypotheses: the more extended the use HRM practices in organizations, the more often workers will work in a work setting based on an informated ICT implementation strategy; an informated ICT implementation strategy will lead to a higher willingness of employees to acquire ICT-related competences; the effect of an informated ICT-strategy on the willingness to acquire ICT-related competences will be higher than that of the HRM-practices. To test these hypotheses, we used a survey of 733 Dutch employees working with ICT devices. Our analysis gives some partial support to the first two hypotheses, but the third is rejected by the data: ICT-implementation strategies and some HRM-practices have an independent effect on the willingness to acquire ICT-compentences.