Between theory and practice in the evaluation of the economic value of human resources

Human resources are an effective critical factor for the success of a business and the achievement of the conditions of efficacy and efficiency of the overall enterprise system, as much as - or even more than - tangible and intangible assets, this paper aims at contibuting to the problem of evaluating the economic value of this particular factor of the production both on a stand-alone basis and with respect to the enterprise value as a whole. The methodologies currently used to evaluate the economic value of human resources of an enterprise swing between the consideration of costs referrable - more or less directly - to such resources, which represent a data certainly realised and, therefore, prudent but not always true (method of hystorical cost, of the cost to replace or reproduce and method of the multiplier, this latter partially based on empirical data), and the evaluation of actual value of the future economic flows that such human resources are theoretically capable to bring to the enterprise (income/financial methods).