Hi Peter & TJ,
I was in graduate school at the University of Minnesota about 18 years ago
when Human Resource Accounting was a course offering in the Industrial
Relations Center. The premise was that the cost of employees should be
treated in financial accounting as an asset rather than as an expense. I
called Georgianne Herman who has been the head library at Industrial
Relations Reference Room at the U of MN for about 40 years and she told me
that Bill Pyle from the U of MN had done a lot of work on the topic years
ago. The most recent reference she could find was an article in the 6/88
issue of Personnel Administrator, "Tallying Employees as Assets" by Robert
B Rogow & Charles P Edmonds. She said that she thought Jac Fitz-Enz at
the Saratoga Institute was working on a related subject matter now.
My memory of the rationale behind the change of the term Personnel to
Human Resources was to give more prestige to the function. If that's
true, it may be time to change the name again.
--Roxanne Abbas Abbas Compensation Strategies 75263.3305@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>