Human capital encapsulates individuals’ attributes of use in the labour market, while reporting on human capital, on the other hand, is primarily associated with the enterprise level. This apparent paradox is partly due to the fact that the identification of an individual’s knowledge, competences and skills as well as their acquisition, maintenance and upgrading, that is, the input side to human capital, is only rarely related to the output, that is, human capital, irrespective of the former being the very substance in the latter. This lack of interconnection is primarily due to different trad
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Human capital encapsulates individuals’ attributes of use in the labour market, while reporting on human capital, on the other hand, is primarily associated with the enterprise level. This apparent paradox is partly due to the fact that the identification of an individual’s knowledge, competences and skills as well as their acquisition, maintenance and upgrading, that is, the input side to human capital, is only rarely related to the output, that is, human capital, irrespective of the former being the very substance in the latter. This lack of interconnection is primarily due to different traditions where human capital is considered in purely economic terms whereas the individual’s acquisition of knowledge is primarily related to the pedagogical, sociological and psychological fields. One reason for this being, of course, that the notion of human capital does originate from within economy and, further, that economists still relate human capital primarily to the enterprise level and/or at macro-economic level while generally neglecting the individual’s level. In this paper human capital is defined as ‘the knowledge, skills, competences and other attributes embodied in individuals or groups of individuals acquired during their life and used to produce goods, services or ideas in market circumstances’. The paper will focus on the enterprise level and primarily with an economic perspective, but, as indicated above, other levels and dimensions will play a significant role throughout the paper. This is particularly the case when it comes to reporting on human capital, and when it comes to an analysis of the interests of the main stakeholders.
Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.
The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 66.507. Volumes two and three are indexed at TD/TNC 66.508 and TD/TNC 66.509. Individual chapters from the three volume set are indexed from TD/TNC 66.510 to TD/TNC 66.540.
The first background report, published in two volumes, is indexed at TD/IRD 88.38 and TD/INT 58.286.
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