Discovering The Pathway To Motivating Human Capital

Human capital is a critical construct in a variety of disciplinary fields spanning from very macro scholarship in economics, where the concept was originally developed (Becker, 1964) to micro level scholarship in psychology who have focused on individual differences in knowledge, skills, abilities, and other talents. Both the strategy and HRM literatures recognize the importance of human capital for enhancing firm performance (Barney, 1991; Becker & Huselid, 2006; Crook, Todd, Combs, Woehr, & Ketchen, 2011). Given the various disciplinary perspectives, it is not surprising that different streams of research focus on slightly different aspects and levels of human capital within organizations.