Past, present and possible future developments in human capital accounting : A tribute to Jan‐Erik Gröjer

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to pay tribute to several of the ideas of Jan‐Erik Gröjer by reviewing and critiquing the field of Human Competence Accounting (HCA) since his Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal review article in 1998.Three research questions he posed in that article are now addressed in the current paper: What could be done, as envisaged in the commentary of Gröjer and Johanson; What has been published in HCA research in the ten year period (1999‐2008); What more could/should be done in HCA as a research agenda. Design/methodology/approach – A literature based analysis and critique of HCA accounting articles published in the selected journals from 1999 to 2008 is employed. A purpose built coding and classification scheme is built around several categories for the purpose of analysing the HCA literature. Findings – The paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of Gröjer and Johanson's review and indicates that questions they raised and possible research directions have been acted upon by a number of authors. The findings of the analysis indicate that, a decade on from the original review, HCA is a legitimate area for accounting research and is multi‐disciplinary and multi‐focused in nature. Research limitations/implications – The paper only considers selected HCA articles within the ten journals used over the period 1999‐2008.American mainstream positivist research has not been reviewed. Also the categories chosen to represent HCA have several limitations which are addressed in the paper. Originality/value – HCA research has a strong tradition and the Gröjer and Johanson review is an important beacon that provided insights to accounting researchers. The current analysis extends Jan‐Erik's work by providing several insights into what has happened and also provides several ideas for future research and policy work in accounting for HCA.