Chapter 4
First Pages
editor of the Harvard Business Review, noted that organizations must also undergo significant efforts to protect their human capital. A firm may “diversify the ownership of vital knowledge by emphasizing teamwork, guard against obsolescence by developing learning programs, and shackle key people with golden handcuffs.”23 In addition, people are less likely to leave an organization if there are effective structures to promote teamwork and information sharing, strong leadership that encourages innovation, and cultures that demand excellence and ethical behavior. Such issues are central to this chapter. Although we touch on these issues throughout this chapter, we provide more detail in later chapters.
We discuss organizational controls (culture, rewards, and boundaries) in Chapter 9, organization structure and design in Chapter 10, and a variety of leadership and entrepreneurship topics in Chapters 11 and 12.
Human Capital: The Foundation of Intellectual Capital
Organizations must recruit talented people—employees at all levels with the proper sets of skills and capabilities coupled with the right values and attitudes. Such skills and attitudes must be continually developed, strengthened, and reinforced, and each employee must be motivated and her efforts focused on the organization’s goals and objectives.24
The rise to prominence of knowledge workers as a vital source of competitive advantage is changing the balance of power in today’s organization. Knowledge workers place professional development and personal enrichment (financial and otherwise) above company loyalty. Attracting, recruiting, and hiring the “best and the brightest,” is a critical first step in the process of building intellectual capital. At a symposium for CEOs, Bill Gates said, “The thing that is holding Microsoft back . . . is simply how [hard] we find it to go out and recruit the kind of people we want to grow our research team.”25
Hiring is only the first of
editor of the Harvard Business Review, noted that organizations must also undergo significant efforts to protect their human capital. A firm may “diversify the ownership of vital knowledge by emphasizing teamwork, guard against obsolescence by developing learning programs, and shackle key people with golden handcuffs.”23 In addition, people are less likely to leave an organization if there are effective structures to promote teamwork and information sharing, strong leadership that encourages innovation, and cultures that demand excellence and ethical behavior. Such issues are central to this chapter. Although we touch on these issues throughout this chapter, we provide more detail in later chapters.
We discuss organizational controls (culture, rewards, and boundaries) in Chapter 9, organization structure and design in Chapter 10, and a variety of leadership and entrepreneurship topics in Chapters 11 and 12.
Human Capital: The Foundation of Intellectual Capital
Organizations must recruit talented people—employees at all levels with the proper sets of skills and capabilities coupled with the right values and attitudes. Such skills and attitudes must be continually developed, strengthened, and reinforced, and each employee must be motivated and her efforts focused on the organization’s goals and objectives.24
The rise to prominence of knowledge workers as a vital source of competitive advantage is changing the balance of power in today’s organization. Knowledge workers place professional development and personal enrichment (financial and otherwise) above company loyalty. Attracting, recruiting, and hiring the “best and the brightest,” is a critical first step in the process of building intellectual capital. At a symposium for CEOs, Bill Gates said, “The thing that is holding Microsoft back . . . is simply how [hard] we find it to go out and recruit the kind of people we want to grow our research team.”25
Hiring is only the first of