Accounting for the human factor: a brief history of a continuing challange

• This chapter reviews several early approaches to accounting for the human factor. The focus is largely, although not exclusively, on Anglo-Saxon developments. Approaches originating elsewhere, including in Finland and France, are discussed in other chapters of the book. We begin with human asset accounting, which had the consequence of linking accounting for the human factor with the task of putting people on the balance sheet. Attention then turns to human resource accounting, the most widely recognised approach to accounting for the human factor, which in the mid 1970s became one of accounting’s major research topics. Although its principal advocate, Flamholtz, successfully repositioned accounting for the human factor as a managerial accounting development, he failed to move beyond a narrow interpretation of what accounting might become in this context. Two later developments are also discussed, human resource costing and accounting, which combines human resource accounting and utility analysis, and human worth accounting, which incorporates insights from the critical accounting and accounting for strategic positioning literatures. While both are clearly enriched by their respective interdisciplinary foundations, in common with human asset and human resource accounting, these developments are yet to produce practical examples of the sort of accountings that promise to move accounting for the human factor into a new phase, one that is capable of accommodating issues associated with employee health and wellness.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

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