Social Futures LO7788

Dr. Ivan Blanco (BLANCO@BU4090.BARRY.EDU)
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 10:42:01 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO7729 --

> Date: 04 Jun 96 08:52:12 EDT
> From: "Roxanne S. Abbas" <75263.3305@CompuServe.COM>
>
> Rol, if you're uncomfortable with being considered an asset, how do you
> feel about being considered a liability? When I was in graduate school
> 18-20 years ago, I took a class called "Human Resource Accounting". The
> basic premise of the course was that if our accounting systems treated
> employees as assets, rather than as liabilities or costs of doing to
> business, we might start treating our people as well as we treat our
> machinery. For how many years did your company maintain a smoke free
> computer environment to protect the equipment before you considered a
> smoke free environment to protect the people?
>
There could be some support for this notion, when we look at how
organizations pay so much attention to the utilization of the "machine
asset," and make all efforts to make sure that they utilized as close to
100% of their capacity as possible. This is the same approach with human
beings. The difference is that, since what we write down in our
accounting books is labor hours, a cost of production. Then, we also want
to make sure that this cost is utilized as close to the 100% as possible.
When it comes to the full utilization of the "human asset," which includes
thinking, learning, reasoning, etc., then it is very difficult to put that
on the books - it may not really exist, because it cannot be counted.
There was an article in Fortune Magazine written by Stwart, a member of
this list, which I think was titled "The Intellectual Capital," and deal
with this issue.

-- Ivan,

--

*************************************************************** R. IVAN BLANCO, Ph.D. Voice 305 899-3515 Assoc. Prof. & Director Fax 305 892-6412 International Business Programs Andreas School of Business _________E-Mail Addresses________ Barry University Bitnet: Blanco%bu4090@Barryu Miami Shores, FL 33161-6695 Internet: Blanco@bu4090.barry.edu <<<<< ---------------- >>>>> "Si un hombre fuera necesario para sostener el Estado, este Estado no deberia existir." "If one man were necessary to sustain a Nation, this Nation should not exist." Simon Bolivar ===============================================================

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