A method for provisioning users with resources is disclosed. The method includes the steps of establishing a set of attributes, organizational information, and user roles, and defining a plurality of resource provisioning policies based on selected attributes and user roles. The method also includes the steps of receiving attribute information, organizational information, and user role information for a particular user or resource, determining which resource access policies are applicable to the user based on the received user role information and attribute information, and provisioning the user with resources based on the applicable resource access policies. The resources to be provisioned include "hard" resources, such as telephones, computers, personal digital assistants, desks, chairs and the like, as well as "soft" resources. such as e-mail and voice mail accounts, application programs, databases, files, folders, the like.