Our Least Important Asset

A comprehensive and insightful look at the modern workplace and how employees are managed, where the new approach is driven by the quirks of financial accounting to the detriment of employees and the long-term success of the organization.Real wages have stagnated or declined for most workers, job insecurity has increased, and retirement income is uncertain.Hours of work for white collar employees have increased steadily, opportunities for advancement have withered, and evidence of the negative effects of workplace stress on health continues to accumulate.Why have jobs gotten so much worse? As Peter Cappelli argues, these issues are not a result of companies trying to be cost effective.They stem from the logic of financial accounting--the arbiter for determining whether a company is maximizing shareholder value--and its fundamental flaws in dealing with human capital.Financial accounting views employee costs as fixed costs that cannot be reduced and fails to account for the costs of bad