ABSTRACT
The idea that people are crucial to the effective running of a commercial organization is nothing new. Even in the early 1800s, far sighted employers had identified the gains to be reaped by taking their employees seriously. If human resource management has never been successfully integrated with other aspects of management that is partly because there has been no consistent methodology for defining, analyzing and measuring the human capital of business enterprises. Showcase International is a multinational company producing high valued added manufactured goods predominantly for the Western Europe and North American markets. Analysis of the work process began with the structure of the firm’s human capital: the distribution of staff in terms of age, occupation, level in the hierarchy, time with the company and other characteristics. In many firms, major management decisions are heavily influenced by strategy consultants whose ideas were developed a quarter century ago by applying traditional principles of industrial economics to business organizations.
