Abstract

It is now almost four decades since Peters and Waterman reminded managers that their employees are their most valuable assets. In so doing they provided support for those within the human resource management profession who argued that there was a necessity to view human resources as strategic assets in need of a new approach to people management, namely, strategic human resource management. Similar thinking was evident in the identification of human capital as the most crucial component of intellectual capital by Edvinsson after the mid-1990s. By this time, however, customers were being touted by many observers as the key organizational asset, providing a fillip to the marketing management function and its own strategic ambitions. Like employees, customers were also identified as a key constituent of intellectual capital, forming a major part of its relational capital component. Although intellectual capital’s third generic component, structural capital, has not attracted the same level of support in respect of its value to organizations as people and customers, there has been a growing awareness of the need to recognize the role which the environment and natural capital plays in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the planet and everything that it encompasses.