Accounting Challenges – Capitalizing Human Value

Assessing the performance of business organisations has been a priority for all stakeholders, and this is the reason accounting has continuously evolved to better assist investors in their decision-making process. However, given the increasing importance of the service industry, the focus in evaluating business performance is also on employees’ performance and employee-centred organisational policies that would further stimulate the knowledge-production at the firms’ level. As many accounting professionals have already understood, accounting faces the challenge of a continuous adaption to the necessities of the business environment, thus admitting that it should provide the grounds for a sustainable and generalizable methodology for intellectual and, more particularly, human capital recognition. This paper offers a literature review on intellectual capital management and reporting, leaving room for the debate upon the choice of instruments that would ensure an accurate presentation employees’ added-value to organisational performance. It also presents a schematic approach to further develop the subject, describing the proposed methodology for further in-depth research.