Virtual Human Resource Management

With the coming of the network era, computer technology and the Internet haveimposed great impacts on individuals, education, business and the society as a whole.In response to this new environment, individuals and work teams receive, digest andevaluate information from their own perspectives in certain ways and reactaccordingly, as a result of which organization modes such as virtual enterprise andvirtual team have been widely adopted. Moreover, a new enterprise-individualcooperation organization mode ——E2C (Employee to Company) is rising. Termssuch as SOHO and virtual employee have become popular and are playing more andmore important roles in the era of knowledge economy.The current domestic and overseas study on virtual mode is still focused onvirtual enterprise and virtual team. Research on virtual employee and virtual humanresource is scarce and is still on the tentative stage.Based on the previous research in the literature, the origin and ways of utilizingvirtual human resource by the enterprises and the management, communication,evaluation and incentive measures of the virtual employees are studied in this paperfrom the new perspective of virtual employee under E2C mode. The main contentsare:(1) The origin and theoretic basis of virtual human resource is discussed,including core competence theory, virtual management theory, human resourcemanagement theory and self-organizing system theory.(2) Based on the employee-organization relationship evolution analysis, thedefinition of E2C mode is discussed and the organizational structure is studiedthoroughly. The 3D matrix model of virtual human resource management isestablished with respect to team lifecycle, employee value lifecycle and employeestability effect.(3) After elaborated analysis of the communication modes of the virtualemployees, the electronic communication structure for E2C which includes theelectronic communication system and the electronic communication rules is designed.A fuzzy AHP model for the evaluation of the performance of the electroniccommunication structure is also established.(4) Based on the value chain analysis of the human resource management, thedefinition and quantitative measure of the contribution degree of the virtual employeeknowledge superiority resource are proposed. Payment differentiation and specialvalue allocation in value allocation are also discussed. The incentive coordinationsystem of the E2C is designed with respect to the concept of surrogate-agent. Theincentive model is established and the control methods of the model are discussed.The coordination strategy of the virtual team is proposed and the method for theincentive validity evaluation is also given.(5) An example of a small scale press company is also studied at the end of thepaper for the analysis of the utilization and management modes of the virtualemployee in the practical operations.The human resource management model based on lifecycle, the virtual employeeelectronic communication structure and the contribution degree of the virtualemployee knowledge superiority resource are the innovation points of the paper.