human resource accounting research paper

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Management Decision

ISSN : 0025-1747

Article publication date: 1 December 2002

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and history of human resource accounting (HRA) with the objective of promoting both continued academic research and organizational applications. The history of HRA illustrates how academic research can generate improvement in management systems. The paper defines HRA and suggests implications of measuring human capital for financial reporting and managerial uses. Recent Swedish‐based HRA applications with respect to measuring human assets and intellectual capital, including the Skandia Navigator, illustrate how intellectual history and developments in business schools can influence business history.

Human resource accounting
Accounting history
Human resource management

Flamholtz, E.G. , Bullen, M.L. and Hua, W. (2002), "Human resource accounting: a historical perspective and future implications", Management Decision , Vol. 40 No. 10, pp. 947-954. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740210452818

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Accounting for Human Resources Revisited: Insights from the Intellectual Capital Field

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human resource accounting research paper

Robin Roslender

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Since the mid-1980s, managerial accounting has been the site for a wide range of exciting developments that have resulted in its wholesale transformation from the allegedly irrelevant discipline it had become by the beginning of that decade. One of many interesting facets of this change process is that managerial accounting’s boundaries have become increasingly difficult to identify, something very apparent in its evolving research literature. Many of the most powerful developments have involved a good measure of cross-functional collaboration with other management disciplines, thereby continuing a tradition that characterizes the previous history of managerial accounting. This in turn has resulted in a twenty-first century managerial accounting discipline that exhibits a valuable coherence with the prevailing strategic management concept.

Largely absent from the compendium of new management accounting developments has been any concerted attempt at progressing accounting for human resources (AHR), that is, for employees, nowadays widely regarded within organizations as the most important asset. One reason for this oversight may be that accounting researchers continue to believe AHR to be a financial accounting and reporting issue, which is mainly concerned with putting people on the balance sheet. This view overlooks the fact that the most influential contribution to AHR to have emerged to date, Flamholtz’s human resource accounting approach, was manifestly conceived of as a managerial accounting development at its inception in the late 1960s. The purpose of this chapter is therefore twofold: to encourage managerial accounting researchers to reengage with the continuing challenge of AHR; and to identify and discuss a number of valuable insights on how this might be progressed that have emerged in the literature on intellectual capital.

The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. The following section provides a brief history of AHR in the form of human asset accounting, human resource accounting and human resource costing and accounting. In the third section, a number of the main accomplishments of the new management accounting are surveyed, while section four offers a commentary on the absence of much interest in AHR within this set of recent advances. The emergence of the intellectual capital field is outlined in section five and is followed in section six by a discussion of a number of developments associated with accounting for intellectual capital. The chapter concludes by identifying the topic of employee health and well-being as one that managerial accounting researchers might wish to consider investigating as they renew their acquaintance with AHR.

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Roslender, R. (2011). Accounting for Human Resources Revisited: Insights from the Intellectual Capital Field. In: Abdel-Kader, M.G. (eds) Review of Management Accounting Research. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230353275_4

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Human Resource Accounting Practices and its Impact on Managerial Performance-A Study

The Review of Contemporary Scientific and Academic Studies, Vol. 2(8), 2022 https://doi.org/10.55454/rcsas.2.8.2022.003

14 Pages Posted: 17 Jul 2023

Dr. Raghavendra K S

Mount Carmel College, Autonomous

Date Written: August 25, 2022

Human resources are an important asset of every organisation and play significant growth in enterprise and economy. The concept of human resource accounting (HRA) is of recent origin and gaining global importance in preparation of financial statements. Due to lack of statutory regulation in practicing of HRA, it is failed in finding place on par with practicing other accounting branches. Over the years the industries seemed to realise the importance of people and perceiving human resources as its strategic assets and gradually there is an increasing experience in adoption of HRA practices besides traditional accounting. This study attempts in identifying the impact of HRA practices in managerial performance analyses of 50 HRA professionals’ responses who are working in reputed organisations in Bengaluru, Karnataka by applying one sample T test and percentage analysis. The results showing significant impact and high effectiveness of HRA practices on managerial performance and organisational efficiency and concludes with recommending compulsory practice of HRA which can result in fair presentation of business valuation and enhancing overall growth of business.

Keywords: Human Asset, Human Resource Accounting, HRA Methods, Managerial Performance.

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Dr. Raghavendra K S (Contact Author)

Mount carmel college, autonomous ( email ).

PG Department of Commerce 58, Palace Rd, Vasanth Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnatak Bengaluru, 560058 India

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