Impact of HR Strategies on Managerial Competence in E-Business Organizations: A Study of Rural Raipur

Abstract

This paper is based on the idea that human resource strategies can impact managerial competence in e-business organizations within rural Raipur, Chhattisgarh in an effort to fill a critical knowledge gap in research regarding how HR practices can be used in rural electronic entrepreneurship settings. A mixed-methods research design was used- with the data being gathered by the use of structured questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions on 267 managers working in 85 e-business organizations. The seven dimensions of the HR strategies evaluated in the study included training and development, performance management, knowledge management, employee engagement, recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits and career development whereas the four dimensions of managerial competence included technical capabilities, behavioral capabilities, strategic capabilities, and contextual capabilities. Findings of the multiple regression analysis in the research found that HR practices explained managerial competence variance of 62.4 per cent with training and development yielding high predictive variance in managerial competence than performance management and knowledge management practices. These results suggest that the managers of rural e-business are highly competent in terms of behavioral and contextual competency but have major gaps in terms of technical and strategic competencies with an overall competence index of 3.52 out of the five-point scale. Structural equation modeling showed that organizational learning culture and quality of technology infrastructure moderates highly the HR strategy-competence relationship and organizations size, educational background and previous management training exposure moderate the relationship. The paper discloses that, although the overall implementation of HR strategies is moderate, strategic investment in training programs, performance management system and knowledge sharing practices can significantly improve the managerial capabilities of resource constrained rural environments. Such results can be used by the e-business leaders and policymakers to build effective managerial talent pipelines in the digital economies in rural areas with supplemented HR interventions, favorable organizational cultures, and proper technological infrastructures to be explicit in competence development.