Financial Management of Human Capital
Human capital refers to the stock of productive skills and technical knowledge embodied in labor. Many early economic theories refer to it simply as labor, one of three factors of production, and consider it to be a fungible resource -- homogeneous and easily interchangeable. Other conceptions of labor dispense with these assumptions.
Knowledge and capital
The introduction of the term is explained and justified by the unique characteristics of knowledge. Unlike physical labor (and the other factors of production), knowledge is:
Expandable and self generating with use: as doctors get more experience, their knowledge base will increase, as will their endowment of human capital. The economics of scarcity is replaced by the economics of self-generation.
Transportable and shareable: knowledge can be moved and shared. This transfer does not prevent its use by the original holder. However, the transfer of knowledge may reduce its scarcity-value to its original possessor.
[edit] Human capital and labor power
In some way, the idea of "human capital" is similar to Karl Marx's concept of labor power: to him, under capitalism workers had to sell their labor power in order to receive income (wages and salaries). But long before Mincer or Becker wrote, Marx pointed to "two disagreeably frustrating facts" with theories that equate wages or salaries with the interest on human capital. Technology transfer requires knowledgeable managers and engineers who are able to operate new machines or production practices borrowed from the leader. Therefore, a country's ability to learn from the leader is a function of its stock of "human capital". Human capital can be acquired through formal schooling, on the job training, etc.
The worker must actually work, exert his or her mind and body, to earn this "interest." Marx strongly distinguished between one's capacity to work, Labour power, and one's very human activity of working.
A free worker cannot sell his human capital to receive money revenues; it is far from being a liquid asset. He does not sell his skills, but contracts to utilize those skills. Even a slave, whose human capital can be sold, does not earn an income him- or herself; instead, the slave-owner gets the income. Under capitalism, to earn income, a worker must agree to the labor conditions (including obedience to the rules and directives) of an employer who wants to hire for a specific period of time.
The latter means that the employer must be receiving an adequate rate of profit from his or her operations, so that workers must be producing surplus-value, i.e., doing work beyond that necessary to maintain their labor power. [2] Though having "human capital" gives workers some benefits, they are still dependent on the owners of non-human wealth for their livelihood.
The term appears in Marx's article in the New-York Daily Tribune article "The Emancipation Question," January 17 and 22, 1859, although there the term is used to describe humans who act like a capital to the producers, rather than in the modern sense of "knowledge-capital" endowed to or acquired by humans.[3]
[edit] Debates about the concept
Some labor economists have criticized the Chicago-school theory, claiming that it tries to explain all differences in wages and salaries in terms of human capital. The concept of human capital can be infinitely elastic, including unmeasureable variables such as personal character or connections with insiders (via family or fraternity). This theory has had a significant share of study in the field proving that wages can be higher for employees on aspects other than Human Capital. Some variables that have been identified in the literature of the past few decades include, gender and nativity wage differentials, discrimination in the work place, and socioeconomic status.
The prestige of a credential may be as important as the knowledge gained in determining the value of an education. This points to the existence of market imperfections such as non-competing groups and labor-market segmentation. In segmented labor markets, the "return on human capital" differs between comparably skilled labor-market groups or segments. An example of this is discrimination against minority or female employees.
Following Becker, the human capital literature often distinguishes between "specific" and "general" human capital. Specific human capital refers to skills or knowledge that is useful only to a single employer or industry, whereas general human capital (such as literacy) is useful to all employers. Economists view firm specific human capital as inherently risky, since firm closure or industry decline lead to skills that cannot be transferred (the evidence on the quantitative importance of firm specific capital is unresolved).
Human capital is central to debates about welfare, education, health care and retirement.
[edit] Mobility between nations
There is a global debate regarding the fair distribution of human capital. This is most pointed with respect to educated individuals, who typically migrate from poorer places to richer places seeking opportunity, making 'the rich richer and the poor poorer'. When workers migrate, their early care and education generally benefit the country where they move to work. And, when they have health problems or retire, their care and retirement pension will typically be paid in the new country.
African nations have invoked this argument with respect to slavery, other colonized peoples have invoked it with respect to the "brain drain" or "human capital flight" which occurs when the most talented individuals (those with the most individual capital) depart for education or opportunity to the colonizing country (historically, Britain and France and the U.S.A.). Even in Canada and other developed nations, the loss of human capital is considered a problem that can only be offset by further draws on the human capital of poorer nations via immigration. However, the economic impact of immigration to Canada can be described as mixed at best.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, human capital in the United States became considerably more valuable as the need for skilled labor came with newfound technological advancement. The 20th century is often revered as the "human capital century" by scholars such as Claudia Goldin. During this period a new mass movement toward secondary education paved the way for a transition to mass higher education. New techniques and processes required further education than the norm of primary schooling, which thus led to the creation of more formalized schooling across the nation. These advances produced a need for more skilled labor, which caused the wages of occupations that required more education to considerably diverge from the wages of ones that required less. This divergence created incentives for individuals to postpone entering the labor market in order to obtain more education. The “high school movement” had changed the educational system for youth in America. With minor state involvements, the high school movement started at the grass-roots level with the help from communities. Particularly the communities with more equal distribution of wealth and more homogeneous population. As a year in high school added more than ten percent to an individual’s income,post-elementary school enrollment and graduation rates increased significantly during the 20th century. The U.S. system of education was characterized for much of the 20th century by a set of virtues that included publicly funded mass secondary education that was open and forgiving, academic yet practical, secular, gender neutral, and funded by small, fiscally independent districts. This early insight into the need for education allowed for a significant jump in US productivity and economic prosperity, when compared to other world leaders at the time.
The rights and freedom of individuals to travel and opportunity, despite some historical exceptions such as the Soviet bloc and its "Iron Curtain", seem to consistently outweigh the rights of nation-states that nurture and educate them. One must also remember that the ability to have mobility with regards to where people want to move and work is a part of their human capital. Being able to move from one area to the next is an ability and a benefit of having human capital. To restrict people from doing so would be to inherently lower their human capital.
Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business.[1] The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations.[1] Human Resource management is evolving rapidly. Human resource management is both an academic theory and a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practical techniques of managing a workforce.
Features
Its features include:
Personnel administration
Personnel management
Manpower management
Industrial management[2][3]
But these traditional expressions are becoming less common for the theoretical discipline. Sometimes even industrial relations and employee relations are confusingly listed as synonyms,[4] although these normally refer to the relationship between management and workers and the behavior of workers in companies.
The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets. The field takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively, and that the main obstacles to their endeavors are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failures of process.
HRM is seen by practitioners in the field as a more innovative view of workplace management than the traditional approach. Its techniques force the managers of an enterprise to express their goals with specificity so that they can be understood and undertaken by the workforce, and to provide the resources needed for them to successfully accomplish their assignments. As such, HRM techniques, when properly practiced, are expressive of the goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall. HRM is also seen by many to have a key role in risk reduction within organisations.[5]
Synonyms such as personnel management are often used in a more restricted sense to describe activities that are necessary in the recruiting of a workforce, providing its members with payroll and benefits, and administrating their work-life needs. So if we move to actual definitions, Torrington and Hall (1987) define personnel management as being:
“a series of activities which: first enable working people and their employing organisations to agree about the objectives and nature of their working relationship and, secondly, ensures that the agreement is fulfilled" (p. 49).
While Miller (1987) suggests that HRM relates to:
".......those decisions and actions which concern the management of employees at all levels in the business and which are related to the implementation of strategies directed towards creating and sustaining competitive advantage" (p. 352).
[edit] Academic theory
The goal of human resource management is to help an organization to meet strategic goals by attracting, and maintaining employees and also to manage them effectively. The key word here perhaps is "fit", i.e. a HRM approach seeks to ensure a fit between the management of an organization's employees, and the overall strategic direction of the company (Miller, 1989).
The basic premise of the academic theory of HRM is that humans are not machines, therefore we need to have an interdisciplinary examination of people in the workplace. Fields such as psychology, industrial engineering, industrial and organizational psychology, industrial relations, sociology, and critical theories: postmodernism, post-structuralism play a major role. Many colleges and universities offer bachelor and master degrees in Human Resources Management.
One widely used scheme to describe the role of HRM, developed by Dave Ulrich, defines 4 fields for the HRM function:[6]
Strategic business partner
Change agent
Employee champion
Administration
However, many HR functions these days struggle to get beyond the roles of administration and employee champion, and are seen rather as reactive than strategically proactive partners for the top management. In addition, HR organizations also have the difficulty in proving how their activities and processes add value to the company. Only in the recent years HR scholars and HR professionals are focusing to develop models that can measure if HR adds value.[7]
[edit] Critical Academic Theory
Postmodernism plays an important part in Academic Theory and particularly in Critical Theory. Indeed Karen Legge in 'Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities' possess the debate of whether HRM is a modernist project or a postmodern discourse (Legge 2004). In many ways, critically or not, many writers contend that HRM itself is an attempt to move away from the modernist traditions of personnel (man as machine) towards a postmodernist view of HRM (man as individuals). Critiques include the notion that because 'Human' is the subject we should recognize that people are complex and that it is only through various discourses that we understand the world. Man is not Machine, no matter what attempts are made to change it i.e. Fordism / Taylorism, McDonaldisation (Modernism).
Critical Theory also questions whether HRM is the pursuit of "attitudinal shaping" (Wilkinson 1998), particularly when considering empowerment, or perhaps more precisely pseudo-empowerment - as the critical perspective notes. Many critics note the move away from Man as Machine is often in many ways, more a Linguistic (discursive) move away than a real attempt to recognise the Human in Human Resource Management.
Critical Theory, in particular postmodernism (poststructualism), recognises that because the subject is people in the workplace, the subject is a complex one, and therefore simplistic notions of 'the best way' or a unitary perspectives on the subject are too simplistic. It also considers the complex subject of power, power games, and office politics. Power in the workplace is a vast and complex subject that cannot be easily defined. This leaves many critics to suggest that Management 'Gurus', consultants, 'best practice' and HR models are often overly simplistic, but in order to sell an idea, they are simplified, and often lead Management as a whole to fall into the trap of oversimplifying the relationship.
[edit] Business practice
Human resources management comprises several processes. Together they are supposed to achieve the above mentioned goal. These processes can be performed in an HR department, but some tasks can also be outsourced or performed by line-managers or other departments.
Workforce planning
Recruitment (sometimes separated into attraction and selection)
Induction and Orientation
Skills management
Training and development
Personnel administration
Compensation in wage or salary
Time management
Travel management (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)
Payroll (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)
Employee benefits administration
Personnel cost planning
Performance appraisal
[edit] Careers
The sort of careers available in HRM are varied. There are generalist HRM jobs such as human resource assistant. There are careers involved with employment, recruitment and placement and these are usually conducted by interviewers, EOE (Equal Opportunity Employment) specialists or college recruiters. Training and development specialism is often conducted by trainers and orientation specialists. Compensation and benefits tasks are handled by compensation analysts, salary administrators, and benefits administrators.
[edit] Professional organizations
Professional organizations in HRM include the Society for Human Resource Management, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the International Public Management Association for HR (IPMA-HR) and the International Personnel Management Association of Canada (IPMA-Canada).Management Association of Nepal [MAN]
参考资料：http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%BA%E5%8A%9B%E8%B5%84%E6%BA%90%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86