Abstract
The application of digital technologies and products in human resource management (HRM) practices has challenged traditional HRM practices and brought about new approaches. Through integrating perspectives of HRM, digital technology, and product development, this paper explores digital productisation of HRM as a new HRM approach and examines the related mechanisms. This paper draws on an inductive case study of Tencent – a leading Chinese technology company that designs and develops various digital HR products for different HR functions and different actors. The findings from this study suggest that Tencent delivers HR services to multiple actors in (and beyond) the organisation, through the productisation of HRM. Based on the product value, there are three types of HR products, namely efficiency-enhancing, policy-supporting and experience-improving products in the case company. We found that service-oriented HR value is the key driving factor to promote productisation of HRM. To achieve a feasible and sustainable digital productisation of HRM, the organisation needs to balance customer logic and user logic and put more emphasis on internal actors’ involvement and coordination in the process. Managerial implications and future research directions are also discussed.