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Several studies find that there is little sex gap in wages at labor market entry, and that the sex gap in wages emerges (and grows) with time in the labor market. This evidence is consistent with (i) there is little or no sex discrimination in wages at labor market entry, and (ii) the emergence of the sex gap in wages with time in the labor market reflects differences between women and men in human capital investment (and other decisions), with women investing less early in their careers. Indeed, some economists explicitly interpret the evidence this way. We show that this interpretation ignores two fundamental implications of the human capital model, and that differences in investment can complicate the interpretation of both the starting sex gap in wages (or absence of a gap), and the differences in “returns” to experience. We then estimate stylized structural models of human capital investment and wage growth to identify the effects of discrimination (or other sources of a starting pay gap) and differences in human capital investment.

This paper examines the impact of residents’ human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, using China’s provincial panel data from 1997 to 2013. The results show that, at the national level as well as at the regional level, residents’ overall human capital investment inequality has a positive significant impact on the urban–rural income gap. In addition, the impact of overall human capital investment inequality increased monotonically from the eastern region inward to the western region. In terms of the relative impact of each component of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, migration investment inequality appears to have the greatest impact at the national level, whereas health investment inequality has the greatest impact on the urban–rural income gap in the eastern region, and education investment inequality exhibits the greatest impact in the central and western regions. We also investigate the impact of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap over different periods. The results show that residents’ overall human capital investment inequality had a positive impact on the urban–rural income gap in the period 1997–2008, but the impact rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Furthermore, the impact of residents’ health investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap shows a downward trend, and the impact of residents’ education investment inequality trended slightly upward from 1997 to 2008, and then rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Finally, the impact of residents’ migration investment inequality was only significant in 1997–2002.

This paper complements previous research on investment in firm-specific human capital by applying real options analysis. Our framework suggests that the parties receive valuable options to exit the contract when information becomes revealed in the future, but these options may be more valuable for one party than the other. Companies and workers attempt to reduce the value of the options through contractual mechanisms that either shift wealth to the party granting the option or prevent the option from being exercised. In both cases, the mechanisms cause the parties to invest in firm-specific capital, resulting in higher output and higher wages.

The purpose of this paper is explore an organizational design that allows firms to invest in transferable strategic human capital. Strategic human capital requires considerable investment in training costs, effective compensation, opportunities for professional development and expectancy of long employment relationship within a firm. A firm can undertake investment in strategic knowledge and workers can engage in learning only in these circumstances. However, there are a number of risks that are associated with investment in strategic human capital within a firm. In this paper, the author argues that providing strategic human capital to other firms within alliances could be a strategy for leveraging resource. Strategic knowledge facilitates transactions between firms possessing co-specialized human capital and tangible resources. Organizational design of an alliance based on co-specialization allows to balance costs and returns for the human capital supplier, as well as for beneficiary and workers. Within an alliance, the human capital supplier provides workers to a beneficiary firm and coordinates their activities. Supplier specialized in human capital investment ensures improved performance, productivity and efficiency of workers. Possibility to form a greater pool of labor force and to centralize training allows optimizing cost and sharing risks associated with investment activity among alliance participants. Human resource practices in an alliance system foster long-term employment relationship. Entering an alliance increases number of job positions, professional development opportunities through horizontal mobility, promotion and learning opportunities for workers. Finally, alliances allow leveraging investment in human capital beyond a single organization.

This paper conceptualizes the use of alliance based on co-specialization as a strategy to optimize investment in strategic human capital resource. It draws upon the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1995) and transaction cost theory (Coase, 1937; Williamson, 1981) to examine an alliance as a strategy for leveraging the human capital resources for accessing new markets, building reputation and sharing the risks across more than one organization.

First, the paper reviews the theoretical literature on human capital as a strategic resource (Becker, 1962; Coff, 1997), its sourcing on internal and external labor markets and respective employment systems (Delery and Doty, 1996; Doeringer and Piore, 1971). Second, it focuses on the features of human capital resource (Barney, 1986; Chi, 1994; Doz and Hamel, 1998). Third, it conceptualizes the use of alliances based on co-specialization as organizational structures for investment in human capital across organizations and examines respective employment system and HR practices (Delery and Doty, 1996; Doeringer and Piore, 1971). As result, the author argues that an alliance can be an alternative mean to optimize returns on investment in human capital with strategic transferable knowledge. By consequence, the author describes an alliance employment system and illustrates the arguments with a case of human capital trading in a co-specialization alliance under a long-term management contract in the luxury hotel industry.

This paper discusses collaborative ventures as a sourcing strategy of the human capital. An alliance strategy is relevant for sourcing the strategic human capital resources. Human capital resource can be accessed by firms through transfer of skills and organizational routines within collaborative agreements, such as alliances based on co-specialization. In this case, alliance is an organizational architecture between organizations that improves the efficiency and productivity, reduces marginal cost on training due to larger scale of operations and reduces risk by splitting investment in human capital and by offering more career and development opportunities for strategic knowledge workers.

This paper aims to depart from the premise that human capital investments and human capital outcomes are often tacit – an aspect, which is often neglected in the current literature on entrepreneurial human capital. The idea of this conceptual paper is to shed light on the social process of how human capital investments and human capital outcomes can be valued and made visible through the validation of prior learning. Thus, this study conceptualises the validation of prior learning as a post hoc, the reflective process through which an aspiring entrepreneur is guided.

This paper is conceptual and introduces a process model.

Findings indicate that the process of the validation of prior learning is well-suitable to inform aspiring entrepreneurs of their investments into human capital and their human capital outcomes. The process results in a (partial) certified qualification that provides entrepreneurial legitimacy.

Thus far, the model is conceptual and should be validated via interviews and further empirical studies in the field.

Literature in the field of entrepreneurial human capital suggests that human capital outcomes are more important for success than inputs. Furthermore, context-specific knowledge, skills and abilities are more important than generalised outcomes. These findings have implications for the design of validation procedures.

Human capital has only been recently conceptualised as consisting of human capital investments and outcomes of human capital investment. However, thus far the literature falls short in acknowledging the tacit nature of human capital investments and human capital outcomes. This paper contributes a structured process of how human capital investments and human capital outcomes are linked and assessed. In so doing, this study extends a recent model of human capital investments and outputs (Marvel et al., 2016, p. 616).

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the effect of high‐level human capital investment, using tertiary education as the proxy, on the urban‐rural income gap in China.

Using a panel dataset covering 28 provinces of China over the period from 1988 to 2007, this paper employs Hansen's method and two‐step GMM‐SYS estimator to estimate the threshold regression model and the dynamic fixed‐effect panel model, respectively.

The urban‐rural income gap is found to be related to high‐level human capital investment in an inverted U‐shaped pattern with respect to economic development level. The estimated threshold turning point is around 20,000 RMB GDP per capita. This estimate is sufficiently robust to model specifications and variants of the dependent variable.

The authors forecast that high‐level human capital investment could play a role in bridging the urban‐rural income gap at the national level by 2014, when China's GDP per capita assumes an annual growth rate of 7.5 percent.

This, it is believed, is the first research to find an inverted U‐shaped pattern for high‐level human capital investment and urban‐rural income gap nexus in China.

Over the past three years Accenture developed and applied a new measurement tool that assesses the maturity of an organization's human capital development processes, benchmarks the processes' performance against other organizations, and determines the relationship of each process to bottom line business results. It is designed to help executives make significantly more informed choices about their investments in human capital. This article aims to look at this tool.

The tool, known as the human capital development framework, now has been tested in more than 60 organizations. This case describes how one organization used it to help turn around a struggling division.

Results of the initial implementations of the framework suggest that financial performance improves as a company improves its scoring in those critical human capital processes with strong relationships to financial success. As an organization moves from one benchmarking quartile to the next in these processes within the framework scoring, its capital efficiency – or the ratio of total annual sales to the capital invested in the operations of the business by shareholders and creditors – improves from 10 to 15 percent.

The framework outlined in this article provides a tool that enables company leaders to make clear‐eyed assessments of the payoff from human capital investments. It helps organizations diagnose their strengths and weaknesses in key human capital practices, to set investment priorities and track performance, and to establish an empirical link between human capital investments, business practices, and overall business performance.

Those organizations in the study with more mature human capital processes have better financial performance than those organizations with less mature processes. Specifically, those organizations that focus on processes devoted to three key areas – creating a people strategy aligned with the business strategy, providing supportive work environments, and developing employees by giving them ample opportunities to learn and grow – achieve far greater economic success than those that do not.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The relevance of finance for strategy is probably never greater than during a recession. We argue that the strategy literature has been virtually silent on the issue of recessions, and that this constitutes a regrettable sin of omission. Recessions are also periods when the commonly held view of financial markets in the strategy literature – efficient, and therefore strategically irrelevant – is particularly misplaced. A key route to rectify this omission is to focus on how recessions affect investment behavior, and thereby firms’ stocks of assets and capabilities which ultimately will affect competitive outcomes. In the present chapter, we aim to contribute by analyzing how two key aspects of recessions, demand reductions and reductions in credit availability, affect three different types of investments: physical capital, R&D and innovation, and human- and organizational capital. We synthesize and conceptualize insights from finance- and macroeconomics about how recessions affect different types of investments and find that recessions not only affect the level of investment, but also the composition of investments. Some of these effects are quite counterintuitive. For example, investments in R&D are both more and less sensitive to credit constraints than physical capital is, depending on available internal finance. Investments in human capital grow as demand falls, and both R&D and human capital investments show important nonlinearities with respect to changes in demand.

This paper aims to clarify the factors that affect the formation of organizational human capital competitive advantage (OHCCA) and construct its structural dimensions.

This research method adopted grounded theory using 20 interviews of managers from 10 companies. Relevant literature was reviewed to conduct open coding, Axial coding and selective coding to ensure OHCCA concept and dimensions.

Studies have shown that OHCCA formation of results from investment and collaboration of three levels: organization, teams and departments and employees. OHCCA formation is composed of three dimensions of organizational human capital investment: planning, practice and stock.

This research enriches the organizational human capital and competitive advantage theories.

The practical significance is to provide theoretical and practical guidance for organizations in creating OHCCAs.

This research is the first to propose and define the OHCCA concept and construct a three-dimensional structure model. Furthermore, this research has revealed the leading factors that affect OHCCA's formation process.