A particle or a wave? It depends on how you measure it.
Are humans resources? It depends on how you measure it.
Resources? Capital? Both? More?
The answer, I think, is "more." A human is a human. They are not a
resource and they are not capital. The original question is rooted in
mechanistic beliefs: Expend human energy to produce a desired and
predictable effect. There are only a couple of problems with this belief:
-- Humans have intelligence and volition. They make choices.
-- Humans cannot be governed unless they consent to be governed.
-- Human potential isn't just in it's capacity to produce wealth.
-- Full human potential is generative. They can create much more than
money.
-- Humans are social, not merely economic.
Perhaps most disconcerting is the moral implications that follow the
belief that humans are either capital or resources. Both capital and
resources are things that can be owned. They are to be used as the owner
sees fit. If humans are either of these, then they must be owned by the
managers and that amounts to slavery. And I think most of us find slavery
a reprehensible practice!
Furthermore the words "resource" and "capital" when applied to human
beings cuts an organization off from some of the richer and more powerful
aspects of human potential: The potential to create new forms of
organization, new societies, and new patterns of interaction that do not
necessarily result in more wealth, but which extend the survivability of
the organization. Clearly capital isn't all it takes to survive in the
marketplace.
Resources and capital are material things. You can touch them. You can see
them, count them, measure them, and utilize them as you will. They have no
volition. They do what you tell them to do because they can't do
otherwise. Humans, on the other hand, do have volition, can decide
whether to follow instructions, and don't always do what they're told.
It's common -- and unfortunate -- to hear managers talk about the people
who "work for them." Damnable words. Damnable! A better and more accurate
way of speaking about employees, from a management perspective, would be,
"those who work with me." A manager does not own the people in his/her
department. They work with those people to achieve a common purpose. It
has always been my belief that people will be more loyal to causes than to
people, and so the bonding glue of an organization is it's cause -- it's
fundamental purpose. An organization isn't held together my managers, and
so managers can stop treating employees like resources and let the people
express their full potential in the workplace! And, in the long run, the
organization will be better off because of it!
--Benjamin B. Compton bcompton@enol.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>