Guest editorial

In this overview, we review the state of the art of research on human capital, high involvement work and worker well-being drawing on the extant literature and seminal work from the foundations of classical economists to recent writings on human resource management (HRM). The two forms of capital are complementary: social capital plays a major role in the formation of human capital (Coleman, 1988), while the more educated are better able to build social capital, which plays an important role in the replication of class structure in education systems (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). Unlike monetary capital and fixed capital, this variable or human capital is not depleted by its use but rather by its non-use (Baker et al., 1997). [...]those capacities we regard as human capital reside in individuals and cannot be abstracted from them in the way that financial or physical capital can be sequestrated. [...]distinctive HRM practices can “help create unique competencies” (Cappelli and Crocker-Heft, 1996, p. 7) and lead the organisation to “human capital management” (Becker et al., 1997, p. 44).