Actually, there is a rich literature about human resource accounting, and
many companies HAVE put people on their balance sheets ... including the
net present value of the "resource." I commend any work by Jac Fitz-Enz
(such as "Human Resource Accounting"), who, at his Saratoga Institute, has
been working with this issue for years; Wayne Cascio ("Costing Human
Resources"); and some interesting stuff on valuing a standard deviation of
performance by Landy and Farr ("The Measurement of Work Performance").
A resource is something with a store of value ... something capable of
being used in accomplishment of some end--as opposed to a liability. All
in all, I'd rather be a resource, thank you. Let's not read too much into
the words, folks. Find out what people mean when they use them ... then
you'll have something to argue about.
Steve
--Stephen B. Wehrenberg Chief, Forecasts and Systems, US Coast Guard; Administrative Sciences, The George Washington University wstephen@erols.com "Life is a jam session."
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>