ICT EFFECT ON HUMAN RESOURCES

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, explained in Washington in 1993 that a new synergy of hardware and software may finally be showing through a significant increase in labour productivity’ .
The banks and Insurance companies will become more ruthless or realistic in hiring employees, “there has been a tremendous reversal of complacency”, said Stephen Roach, an economist at Morgan Stanley who had frequently criticised computer spending. John skeritt, managing partner of Andersen Consulting in the US, reckoned that “Technologies like image processing, voice recognition, telephone banking, expert system for doing loan evaluations, will continue to cause massive layoffs”.
As personal computers became more integrated into office organisation they lost much of their idealistic appeal of the previous decade, as the liberators of young people from bureaucracies and officialdom. They were still thrilling instruments for loners including writers, dealers and designers. But inside companies they were becoming part of the power-structures, associated with central whom rather than liberation, they were linked up to central networks and databanks which could provide abodes with mechanical all-seeing eyes, showing them how to make ants, enabling them to check on salesmen’s performances, to bypass middle-managers and replace them. Decisions taken through computers as Norbert Wiener had warned forty years earlier were overtaking human decisions. Know-how was prevailing over know-what and the spread of computers was speeding up the most ruthless purge of company men since the depression of the thirties.
Human Resource productivity is a result of so many factors such as health are, nutrition, motivation, remuneration, education and training, division of labour, effective administration and the quality of tools at the employees disposal including ICT tools. In recent years ICT has been playing a non dominant role in determining the productivity of the employees. It is argued that even the relatively rich economies seeking to capture some of the key industries of the next century, will need to create the conditions and environment necessary for creativity and innovation essential for moving into and being competitive in the knowledge-based industries which will provide the highest value-added for economies