  Today's service companies operate in a technology-oriented and
knowledge-intensive environment while recruiting and training individuals from
an increasingly diverse population. One of the resulting challenges is ensuring
strategic alignment between their two key resources - technology and workforce
- through the resource planning and allocation processes. The traditional
hierarchical decision approach to resource planning and allocation considers
only technology planning as a strategic-level decision, with workforce
recruiting and training planning as a subsequent tactical-level decision.
However, two other decision approaches - joint and integrated - elevate
workforce planning to the same strategic level as technology planning. Thus we
investigate the impact of strategically aligning technology and workforce
decisions through the comparison of joint and integrated models to each other
and to a baseline hierarchical model in terms of the total cost. Numerical
experiments are conducted to characterize key features of solutions provided by
these approaches under conditions typically found in this type of service
company. Our results show that the integrated model is the lowest cost across
all conditions. This is because the integrated approach maintains a small but
skilled workforce that can operate new and more advanced technology with higher
capacity. However, the cost performance of the joint model is very close to the
integrated model under many conditions and is easier to implement
computationally and managerially, making it a good choice in many environments.
Managerial insights derived from this study can serve as a valuable guide for
choosing the proper decision approach for technology-oriented and
knowledge-intensive service companies.
