Human Capital Creation Research Articles

HUMAN CAPITAL, SOCIAL CAPITAL AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN EUROPE: AN APPLICATION OF LINEAR HIERARCHICAL MODELS*

The theory of human capital, even if it reckons the importance of time in science, is too short for explaining the existing diversity of scientific output. The paper introduces social capital as a necessary complement to explain the creation of scientific human capital. It connects these two concepts by means of a hierarchical econometric model. Bibliographical databases contain much information which is exploited to figure out collaboration, mobility, publishing habits and institutional characteristics. The two level hierarchical model is estimated on 14 European countries using bibliometric data in the fields of economics.

The globalization of Chinese telecom corporations: strategy, challenges and HR implications for the MNCs and host countries

This paper investigates the motives of internationalization of two leading Chinese multinational corporations, their entry strategy and strategic responses to overcome internationalization barriers. In particular, we explore the political strategy and the corresponding political behaviour these two firms adopt to facilitate their internationalization process. We also examine the business strategy and human resource strategy they deploy in their internationalization endeavour and what impacts these may have on host country development, including human capital development and employment creation.

Is Triple Helix Innovation Possible in Macedonia?

AbstractMacedonia is experiencing constrains in relation to science, technology and innovation policies which are similar to those of other South Eastern European countries since gaining independence. The country needs a holistic approach to research and development (R&D) issues and human capital creation in order to align its scientific and research target policies with the ones set in the EU’s Lisbon strategy 2020 (augmenting the R&D part in the nation’s GDP up to 3%). At the beginning, this paper gives a brief overview of the triple helix model of innovation. It also provides for a critical analysis of the Macedonian reality in terms of innovation. More specifically, the paper analyzes data on R&D in the private and public sector and the number of innovative activities measured by patents field and granted in Macedonia. It also examines the relations between the academia and the business sector, and the role of the public sector and the government in initiating the whole process of innovation. Whether, and to what extent, new hybrid forms of triple helix are emerging in Macedonia so as to shape the creation and the development of a national policy matrix for innovation is a question that asks for joint theoretical and empirical inquiry. This paper will feature the results of a survey conducted over 50 Macedonian technology firms. The empirical data complement the theoretical observations of the authors of this paper. The focus of this paper is to shed light on the possible patterns of old and new organizational forms of university – industry partnership in order to entice creation of a sustainable innovation model in Macedonia.

A comparative study of family social capital and literacy practices in Singapore

Social capital – the social relations between people – is an important component of the family environment and is crucial for the creation of human capital for the next generation. Drawing on James S. Coleman’s theory of family capital, this study focuses on parents’ utilization of social capital to support children’s literacy acquisition in four Singaporean and immigrant middle-class Chinese families in Singapore. Comparative analyses of observation and interview data reveal that these families differed not only in the volume of social capital they possessed but also in the activation of this capital for their children’s biliteracy and educational development. They also reveal that the parents’ application of social capital is motivated by such factors as the status of the family (immigrant or native), parental occupation, parents’ educational views and the family’s acculturation to the host society (in the case of immigrant families). Furthermore, a family’s skilful use of its social capital could compensate for a relative shortage of human capital. These findings, taken as a whole, contribute to Coleman’s theory by disentangling potential from actualized social capital.

Empirical Research on Creative Human Capital of Family Enterprises: A Review Based on Sustainable Development

How to efficiently introduce creative human capital of family enterprises, disclose the relationship between creative human capital and profit, human capital, the quantity of labor, earning distribution relationship, knowledge accumulation & institutional innovation are big tasks for Chinese enterprises’ growth. We may find the relationship between sustainable development and creative human capital is single-directional, that’s to say, creative human capital of family enterprises improves the enterprises’ sustainable development.

Social Cooperatives' Ways of Operation Activity in Poland — Some Features of Theory and Practice

The social cooperative is one the newest organizational-legal forms of social enterprise. Its growth is caused by many determinants. One of them is the necessity of the prevention of social exclusion. Social cooperatives’ exceptionality is reflected in simultaneous realization of economic and social purposes but social goals owns the preference character. The paper is composed of three parts. Its first part contains deliberations about the concept itself and objectives of the social cooperative. They are presented against a wider background of human and social capital creation by enterprises. The second part deals with social and economic characteristics of the social cooperative. Finally, the third part contains fragmentary findings of empirical studies focused on the operation of social cooperatives in Poland. These findings cannot be treated, however, as sufficient to consider them a satisfactory recapitulation, and for this reason they should be treated as a preliminary diagnosis of analyzed problems accompanying the operation of social cooperatives in Poland.

Transformational leadership and human capital benefits: the role of knowledge management

PurposeIn order to achieve sustained competitive advantage through developing human capital, organizations, apart from human resource management practices, concentrate on developing transformational leaders and implementing knowledge management (KM). To take part in their efforts, this paper intends to explore leadership and KM literatures to examine the interrelationship between transformational leadership, KM, and employee‐perceived human capital creation or benefits.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review is carried out of traditional and contemporary theoretical and empirical research studies to support the nexus of interrelationship between transformational leadership, KM, and human capital. This review is mainly integrated using a model and propositions that relate transformational leadership and KM with human capital benefits.FindingsTransformational leaders have potential to affect their employees' perceptions of human capital benefits. They also have the greatest potential to augment these benefits through involving them in the KM process, establishing organizational culture, and encouraging communication among employees.Research limitations/implicationsThis model suggests that human resource managers should provide training to managers with regard to developing transformational leadership behavior, since this behavior contributes to human capital creation by which an organization achieves competitive advantage. Furthermore, this study mainly focuses on leaders as transformational leaders, since these leaders are highly capable of stimulating their followers' creativity. Therefore, this study only considered the components described by Bass and Avolio.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to leadership literature by adding the notion of transformational leadership as an antecedent of human capital creation.

Determinants of schooling in Botswana: do family background and location matter?

Education is a key development goal that is critical in the fight against poverty through the creation of human capital. For this reason, the Botswana Government has prioritised the provision of free basic education to its citizens as part of the strategy to achieve the millennium development goals (MDGs). However, not all school going age children are in school despite the free basic education. This motivated the study to investigate the determinants of schooling in Botswana using the HIES 2002/2003 and LFS 2005/2006 datasets and the probit model. The probit regression results indicate that children’s current schooling is positively and significantly influenced by the age of the children themselves; education level of the household head; having at least one of the parents alive; urban location; employment status of household head and household income.

Capacity Building in Indian Education

Infrastructure is loosely understood to be the physical and structural features of a country which constitute its skeletal and arterial systems. The citizens of any country are, however, its greatest assets. In that sense, the most important infrastructure should be that which affects the creation and utilization of human capital. Education is thus a key form of infrastructure but one which has been historically and sorely ignored by all developing countries in favour of more grandiose physical projects. If India is to stand tall among developed nations, it cannot do so with a crippled educational backbone. This article offers some thoughts on creating an infrastructure behind India's pre-tertiary educational system.

VCT uptake and associated factors among teachers from Harari Administrative Region

sector which is vital to the creation of human capital is also equally affected. The loss of skilled and experienced teachers due to the problem is increasingly compromising the provision of quality education in most African countries and thus, needs appropriate intervention measures that reverse the current trend. Objectives: To assess the prevalence and determining factors of VCT uptake among teachers of Harari Administrative Region. Methods: A cross sectional study design with analytic component was conducted among 566 teachers drawn from 20 randomly selected schools of Harari Administrative Region from March to April 2009. Self administered questionnaire, adapted from previous relevant studies was used to estimate the prevalence of VCT uptake and the various socio-demographic and psychological factors. Data were entered and analyzed using bi-variate and multivariate models. Results: A total number of 497 teachers responded to the questionnaire adequately making the response rate of 87.8%. The mean age of the participants was 34.68 ranging from 18 – 61 years. There were more teachers from urban areas (72.0%) and most of them were males (62.2%). About half (54.1%) were married and few (5.2%) were divorced. The vast majority (98.6%) heard about the confidential VCT service and their major sources of information were mass media (85.3%) and health workers (56.2%). The prevalence of VCT uptake was 46.3%. The odds of utilizing VCT significantly increased with being younger age group, female and first and second cycle teachers’category. Conclusions: The major factors identified for increased uptake of VCT are gender, age and salary category. Actions targeting the males, non-youth age group and low grade teachers’ are necessary to follow their peer groups to utilize the VCT service in order to achieve the goal of education set for 2015.

Transformational leadership, interim leadership, and employee human capital benefits: an empirical study

Managing turbulent economic environment, organizations realize the importance of developing transformational leaders since these leaders immensely contribute to human capital creation process for managing and implementing changes and consequently, improve organizational performance. This paper explores how employees’ perceptions on leaders’ transformational style and employees’ interim leadership simultaneously and positively affect their human capital benefits and analyzes the existence of the differences between private and public Indian manufacturing industries on these relationships. For these purposes, 470 responses were collected from middle and top level management employees who have experienced interim leadership. The results show that these leadership factors have strong and significant potential to influence employee perceived human capital benefits, and importantly, such direct and significant relationships are widely observed among private sector employees.

How much human capital does Eastern Europe have? Measurement methods and results

There is a general consensus that human capital is a major determinant of economic development. However, the range of available human capital variables is very wide in both a technical and a theoretical sense, so that different human capital measures are sometimes only loosely correlated. This is partly because they capture different aspects of human capital ranging from the resources devoted to human capital creation (without taking account of market forces) to attaching a monetary value based on the market value of labour. Hence, different measures can lead to very different results and conclusions. This difference is especially prevalent in Eastern Europe, which experienced a massive expansion of formal education in the twentieth century which was not always matched by demand from the market or the efficiency of institutions. Consequently, if we look at the attainment figures only, we find that Eastern Europe had about 70–80% of the USA's human capital in per capita terms in the 1990s. Using methods that measure the market value of human capital, however, reduces this estimate to 10–20%.

Human Resource Accounting - A New Dimension

Human resource accounting (HRA) is an attempt to identify, quantify and report investment made in Human resources of an organization that are not presently accounted for under conventional accounting practice. Businesses which require a considerable creativity or are science-based show a significant difference between market value and net book value. This difference is for intangible assets (including human skills). However the Human Resources are yet to get recognition in Balance Sheet. Businesses are not properly accounting for it in Books of Accounts. Auditor certifies in his report that balance sheet shows true position of business in spite of the fact that it is not showing the value of human resources. Researches in this field have been slow and researchers are not able to develop a model which are free from major limitations. Major limitation of existing models is that they are not able to identify two effects on Human Capital creation which is back bone of accounting. In this article I have discussed efforts done in this field by researchers and proposed a model for valuation and accounting of Human resources. This proposed model is not altogether new model but it is an extension of Lev and Schwartz Model (L&S) because at one point it uses Lev & Schwartz Valuation principles. It also remove major weakness of L&S model such as it is able to account for Human Resource in balance-sheet. This model also encourages employee to achieve high level of performance.

The Determinants of Deprivation in Jordan: Empirical Study

The objective of this study was to determine and explain the factors that affect deprivation in Jordan. To do so, this study constructs and tests a model that determines the factors, which affect deprivation. It employs an econometric analysis to examine the relationship between some main socioeconomic variables and the status of deprivation in Jordan. It looks at how changes in income, unemployment, education, health, housing conditions and access to services, as well as pollution, will affect the status of deprivation. The study uses the raw data of the national Household Income and Expenditure Survey HIES, which was conducted by the Jordanian Department of Statistics during 2002/2003 and covered 12,792 households. The study concludes that deprivation was caused by low income, unemployment, low educational attainment, bad type of housing, barriers to essential services, poor health and pollution. However, the effect of these factors varies. Simulation results of the model predicts that if income deprivation, unemployment and education deprivation are reduced by 1% the overall deprivation index will decrease by 0.7%, holding other variables without change. Realizing such reductions, however, will require policies to further increase wages and salaries, encourage investment in human capital and job creation.

Social capital and knowledge acquisition in professional-client relationships

This paper examines the role of social capital in professional-client relationships. We consider exploring the effects of social capital on the creation of human capital, a subject which is worthwhile investigating within all professions. In this paper, we concentrate on what are known as the structural and attributive dimensions of social capital and aim to understand their effects on the knowledge acquisition of professional practitioners. We analyse the association between social capital and human capital (i.e., knowledge acquisition) in the context of the lawyer-client relationship. Through the application of social capital theory, this paper seeks to advance our knowledge of the relations between professionals and clients. More importantly, the study contributes to improving our understanding of the role of social capital in influencing a lawyer's ability to retain and win new clients.

Religious participation and children’s education: A social capital approach

Based on the argument in both economic and sociological literature that religion is conducive to children’s human capital formation, this paper provides a model of religious participation and explores a mechanism that “social capital” affects children’s education, a la Coleman [Coleman, J.S., 1988. Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology 94, S95–S120]. The model generates several interesting implications, which help explain some important stylized facts about education and religion. Further, in a dynamic setting, the model shows that there exists a steady state in which individuals allocate a positive amount of time and resources to religious activities. Thus, it complements the existing literature to explain why seemingly unproductive religions can be everlasting.

‘Now I am free’—education and human resource development in Eritrea: contradictions in the lives of Eritrean women in higher education

Human resource development as an objective of education policy in developing countries is increasingly narrowed down to its human capital component. In Eritrea, the objective of a highly centralized human resource development strategy is to produce human capital for the advancement of the nation. This instrumentalist view ignores the fact that education is not only related to one's position in a given society, but equally to the development of personal identity and new forms of agency on an individual level—thus potentially encompassing contradictions between the individual and the common good. This paper—based on the personal histories of a sample of female students at Asmara University—discusses these contradictions in terms of these women's acceptance of and resistance to the government's plan for them. It further argues that an education system geared predominantly towards the creation of human capital is bound to do so at the expense of social solidarity.

Firm Location and the Creation and Utilization of Human Capital

This paper presents a theory of location choice that draws on insights from the incomplete contracts and investment flexibility (real option) literatures. Our analysis indicates that the choice of locating within rather than away from industry clusters is influenced by the extent to which training costs are borne by firms versus employees. In addition, the uncertainty about future productivity shocks and the ability of firms to modify the scale of their operations also influence location choice. In particular, we show that locating in clusters is preferred when training costs are borne by workers and when firm-specific productivity shocks can potentially be large. However, there is an incentive for firms to choose isolated locations when significant training costs are borne by firms.

Human capital in the industrial districts

This paper focuses on the creation of human capital in the industrial districts. I argue that the recent firm strategy perspectives may explain regional (district) differences. In this context human resources are critical to creation and dissemination of the knowledge-based resources. I further distinguish between the degree of control and ownership of resources and transferable and non-transferable human capital. Using this conceptual framework I analyze industrial district addressable non-transferable resources. This paper suggests that firms should take on a more active role in creating and exploiting local addressable human resources. The paper ends by describing an illustrative example: the Spanish ceramic tile industry.

The Latin American social agenda in the year 2000

Now that the 1990s have ended and a new millennium is dawning, the low rate of economic growth, the region’s vulnerability to international financial instability and the limited progress made in terms of equity oblige us to reflect on the social agenda for the future. An important role in that agenda will continue to be played by the efforts to overcome poverty and indigence, conditioned to a large extent by the region’s capacity for economic change and its dynamism in creating large numbers of jobs of higher quality in terms of productivity and income. At the same time, in view of the heavy burden of unfulfilled social needs that still persists, it is essential that social programmes should use their resources efficiently and –in order to be prepared for possible crises– safety nets should be established to cope with periods of recession. Those programmes must attach great importance to the creation of human capital, taking care to improve the present unsatisfactory distribution of education between the social strata, which is one of the symbols of Latin America’s social shortcomings. Education alone, however, is not enough to overcome the lack of equity, improve income distribution and generate a situation of social mobility which will give sons and daughters better opportunities for material well-being and social status than their parents had. Economic change should take advantage of the better levels of education achieved by creating more jobs of higher productivity, for which purpose it will be necessary to increase the present investment coefficients and the procurement and dissemination of technical progress. A better mix of labour, capital and technical progress will lay the foundations for more inclusive and equalitarian societies.