Understanding Interdependencies between Human Capital and Structural Capital

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this article is to address and begin to explore interdependencies between human capital and structural capital. It provides a brief, if somewhat critical, recent history of the emergence of the intellectual capital (IC) concept and how a largely taxonomic approach, and forms of neopositivist research, became institutionalized. The broad outlines of four approaches to addressing the agency–structure debate in social theory – namely, reductionist, determinist, conflationist, and relationist/realist – are very briefly discussed to set the scene for providing a skeletal outline of a Kantian pragmatist approach, which is relationist/realist, in this article. This is the kernel of the future-oriented approach to IC research advocated here to overcome the limits of both extant taxonomies and neopositivist worldviews. The conclusion reached is that future research from a Kantian pragmatist perspective has the potential to substantively enhance the understanding in this complex field.