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 Grojer 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 Grojer 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 Grojer and Johanson's review and indicates that questions they raised and possible research directions have been ...