Augustine Paz wrote -
> How would a learning organization define and understand capital? Is
> the profit motive compatible with a learning organization? Or is
> learning simply a means to whatever ends one decides to pursue?
Then "jpomo@gate.net" replied in part:
>....The same can be said of many other conditions such as.
>healthy, happy people and excellence in production and high ethics and
>high quality. Each of these good things is enhanced by every other good
>thing and is decreased to the extent that another good thing is not
>satisfied. Happy customers are compatible with happy employees and happy
>investors. Capital is just one of the many good things which any company
>must have in order to be successful and profits are one of the
>characteristics necessary to attract capital sufficient to the company's
>needs.
The concept of soft capital consisting of
Structural capital (patents, software, processes)
Intellectual capital (or people), and
Customer capital (contracts and other long-term commitments)
is gradually gaining acceptance. The financial profession is laggard in
this arena and their traditions are hopelessly inadequate for current
businesses. The recent market capitalisation of Yahoo is a clear indicator
that finance measurements are meaningless. The "market" is assigning value
to all three of these sources of 1990's capital.
Unfortunately, banks are still relying on the finance types for their
lending practices...
--Keith Cowan <72212.51@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>