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The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the impact of human capital development in organizations. It is based on some conceptual aspects of human resource accounting and considers how investments in the development of human capital can be measured in order to investigate the financial returns for organizations.

The study is exploratory in nature as this is the first of its kind in the Pakistani manufacturing sector. The technique of convenience sampling was used to collect the data due to time and resource limitations. The sample comprises of 30 leading companies in the Pakistani textile sector. A self‐administered postal questionnaire was designed for the research survey. The results focus on the benefits derived by using the capital investment appraisal techniques of human resource accounting including: return on investment, benefit to cost ratio, weighted average cost of capital, and bottom line evaluations.

The results provide evidence of an association between investment in the development of human capital and the benefits, which organizations can reap from such investments. It further finds that the organizations investing in training and development programs provide high employee productivity that ultimately contributes towards high‐organizational performance.

Owing to the research design, the results may exhibit a lack of generalizability to other sectors. As the results cannot be applied to other organizations, further research can be done by using the same techniques.

This paper is a groundbreaking work in Pakistan and thereby an addition to the existing global literature on human resource accounting. This research provides new directions for the literature in this area, by encouraging a debate about the importance of investing in the development of human capital.

Given the rapid changes in economies, labour organisations and production processes and technologies, investment in training and in developing human resources becomes more important than ever. One of the core issues in the present debates, however, concerns the issue of the funding. The increasing pressure on public funds clearly delineates that expanding investments should not be expected from this side. Governments are already seeking alternative funding mechanisms for education to decrease costs and increase individual responsibility for one's own human resources. An increased investment should therefore come from enterprises and individuals. Disparities in investment between different categories of enterprises and in participation between different groups of (un)employed indicate, however, that there are still market imperfections. This raises the issue of the adequacy of existing instruments for stimulating investment in human resources and actually raising the level of investment.

This chapter discusses key training challenges that organizations need to confront with the objective of building a robust human resource management system. Given the dynamics of the current business environment, training and development has become an indispensable function in global organizations. Building an effective human capital that contributes to continual organizational growth has become the established norm to survive in a competitive business landscape. However, the training and development function is often rendered ineffective, on account of various bottlenecks existing in the organization. Addressing these bottlenecks is quintessential in ensuring the creation of a performance-driven human capital. The goal of this chapter is to draw attention to the training impediments that hinder organizational growth and to diagnose the underlying causes for the same. This chapter concludes with recommendations that organizational decision-makers can leverage in their quest to strengthen the human capital, by utilizing their training and development infrastructure optimally.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The aim of the paper is to identify which variables of training policy have a significant and positive impact on organisational performance.

A targeted literature review was conducted to identify and collate a comprehensive range of human resource management and training conceptualisations/investigations. This was the basis for the approach to contrast hypotheses. The paper used a sample of Spanish companies and the method of analysis was regression.

The results obtained in this paper do suggest that the training policy positively correlates with organisational performance, both using objective result measures (productivity and financial performance) and in the subjective measure of perceived financial performance and in intermediate result measures.

The study was confined to the analysis of a single Spanish region, and specifically referred to its hotel industry, which means that the results obtained must be situated within that specific context examined. To this must be added that the data were collected from a single source (CEOs) and, of course, it would have been more appropriate to use data from multiple sources.

From an academic point‐of‐view, the research initiative presented here is placed within the new line of development for research into training and performance that tries to overcome the restrictions faced in other publications, trying to go one step further in the search for more specific connections between human resources and performance. From a practical viewpoint, this research work could help hotel entrepreneurs in two ways: first, by providing evidence that the resources allocated by hotel firms to the training of their staff have a positive impact on their profit levels; and second, by showing which variables should be considered to achieve this relationship.

Describes the areas of human resource development that come under the administration of the Human Resources Development Bureau of the Ministry of Labour in Japan, and are administered through human resource development councils at the central and prefectural level. The recent rapid changes in industrial and demographic structures necessitated a systematic training for new skills and upgrading of the current ones for people who enter the labour market for the first time as well as those who are changing jobs. The Ministry’s role is to provide the integrated system of training opportunities, evaluation and certification, and the financial support to encourage participation of an increasing number of workers in vocational education, to improve their future prospects in employment. In particular, the establishment of the Business Career Development System is a reflection of a trend from generalist training of managers hitherto carried out in‐company to specialist development now offered outside the company.

Aims to shed some light on the modalities and the need for human resources planning in Swaziland libraries. Systematic forecasts of the libraries′ future demand for, and supply of labour should be meticulously undertaken so that Swaziland libraries can put themselves in a better position to plan for the recruitment, selection, training, and career paths of staff. Swaziland′s lack of trained personnel with sufficient knowledge to handle the intricacies of automation has necessitated the external recruitment of expatriate staff, with serious implications for the budget. Swaziland assumed the chairmanship of the SADC Regional Training Council (RTC) which now controls the affairs of the Human Resources Development Sector. One of the projects of this sector has been to create a Regional Human Resource Information System (RHRIS). This project has provided guiding principles to those in the region whose responsibility is human resources planning and development. It is essential that SWALA should develop a human resources database for the library profession through its Sub‐Committee for Human Resources. The development of a human resources audit in Swaziland libraries will help to determine what skills, knowledge, and abilities are required for particular vacancies or jobs. The idea is to collect enough information which will enable library managers to match their employees to the available jobs.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.