Does the Integrated Reporting’s definition of human capital fit with the HR manager’s perspective?

Journal title FINANCIAL REPORTING
Author/s Maurizio Cisi, Francesca Alice Centrone, Laura Corazza
Publishing Year 2020 Issue 2020/2
Language English Pages 28 P. 5-32 File size 178 KB
DOI 10.3280/FR2020-002001
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The assessment of the organisation’s ability to create value over time through its human capital (HC) is crucial for every business. Several definitions of HC ex-ist, quite ambiguous and not unique. This fuzziness is impacting, in turn, the busi-ness practice. This study is grounded on the concept of HC, as defined by the Inte-grated Reporting (IR) and it is focused on testing the self-identification of HR managers with the IR definition. With this work, authors want to question the in-clusivity of the definition of HC, as well as, its practical suitability, recurring to a theoretical framework called dialogic-polylogic accounting. A first exploration of the HC definition from the IR framework has been con-ducted, representing the cause-effect links and some reflections on its semantics. Furthermore, the opinion of a purposive sample of key informants HR managers is explored through a qualitative content analysis on 19 semi-structured interviews. Such key informants have a first-hand knowledge about the community of Italian HR managers, and they have no experience in IR representing the voice of ex-cluded, but potential users. Despite an initial sympathetic reaction, the HC practi-tioners stressed an excessive technical rigidity in IR definition, quite distant from their field experience on HC.

Keywords: Human capital definition, Integrated Reporting, human resources, dia-logic-polylogic accounting, non-financial reporting.

Jel codes: M40, M49, Q01

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Maurizio Cisi, Francesca Alice Centrone, Laura Corazza, Does the Integrated Reporting’s definition of human capital fit with the HR manager’s perspective? in "FINANCIAL REPORTING" 2/2020, pp 5-32, DOI: 10.3280/FR2020-002001