Comprehensive Literature Review on Human Capital Investments Theory: What’s in it?

Abstract

‘Human Capital’ (HC) is being widely used in different fields: economics, human resource development, and national planning with different meanings in different fields. Seemingly, the term has, in some instances, been misused in the literature and in the practice. In such a context, it is worthwhile to investigate into the development of HC theory. This study has been dedicated to elaborate the evolution of human capital investment theory, the content of HC, the proxies of HC, the benefits of human capital investment, the causes of human capital investment, and the limits of human capital investment theory. This study, hence paves the way for positioning human capital investments theory in the literature and to strategies HC development practices consciously rather approaching to it with gut feeling.