Identity ambiguity and the promises and practices of hybrid e-HRM project teams

The role of IS project team identity work in the enactment of day-to-day relationships with their internal clients is under-researched. We address this gap by examining the identity work undertaken by an electronic human resource management (e-HRM) ‘hybrid’ project team engaged in an enterprise-wide IS implementation for their multi-national organisation. Utilising social identity theory, we identify three distinctive, interrelated dimensions of project team identity work (project team management, team ‘value propositions’ (promises) and the team’s ‘knowledge practice’). We reveal how dissonance between two perspectives of e-HRM project identity work (clients’ expected norms of project team’s service and project team’s expected norms of themselves) results in identity ambiguity. Our research contributions are to identity studies in the IS project management, HR and hybrid literatures and to managerial practice by challenging the assumption that hybrid experts are the panacea for problems associated with IS projects.

► e-HRM project team membership is presented as consisting of HR/IS ‘hybrids’. ► Such hybrids exist in a relational/paradoxical context involving team identity work. ► Using social identity theory, three interrelated elements of identity work emerge. ► These are project team management, value propositions and knowledge practice. ► Dissonance between client and team service norms creates identity ambiguity.