Editorial

Citation

Roslender, R. (2011), "Editorial", Journal of Human Resource Costing & Accounting, Vol. 15 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jhrca.2011.31615caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Human Resource Costing & Accounting, Volume 15, Issue 3

The human resource costing and accounting field continues to attract a growing interest within the academic community. Information recently produced by the publishers shows that in 2010 download activity for the journal topped 20,000 for the first time, an increase of almost 40 per cent on 2009. The journal also attracted over 1,000 users for the first time in 2010. Projections for the current year are that downloads will top 25,000 while the number of users should increase by a further 50 per cent. International coverage is also strong, with Malaysia, Australia, the UK, Iran, India and China all highly prominent. Over a dozen papers have been downloaded in excess of 1,000 times since Emerald acquired the journal in 2005, one of which has attracted well over 3000 downloads. Two papers had each attracted over 500 downloads by mid May of this year. At the same time, the invisible college of human resource costing and accounting academic continues to explore early issues of the journal. Finally, citation data belies the oft-repeated observation that you are lucky if more than two other people read your paper, standing at a healthy mean level of 8.07 cites per paper. Long may this success continue.

As part of the strategy to ensure the continued upward trajectory of the journal, greater attention is to be devoted to the publication of themed and special issues in future volumes. The 2009 collection of contributions in memory of Jan-Erik Grojer, published as issue 2, continues to be highly influential within the field. Currently, Christian Nielsen is working to develop a special issue on the role of human resources in business model performance, full details of which can be found in volume 14, issue 4 and on line. Invitations have recently been sent to colleagues who might valuably contribute to a themed issue on employee health and wellbeing, a topic that is of particular interest to myself. Readers with interests in this topic are also invited to make contact with me in order to discuss further contributions. Equally, any suggestions for additional themed and special issues will be greatly appreciated.

By the time that the current issue is published, the journal will have moved to on-line submission via the ScholarOne manuscript system. Emerald has been rolling this system out for some time, as a result of which many of the gliches that inevitably accompany such a change have been identified and rectified. The principal driver for the introduction of on-line submission is the provision of a better service to contributors. Helping editors is also a consideration. A key feature of the new system is the provision of reviewers’ comments in a more standardised form, which should have the result of increasing the transparency of the review process. This said, there remain plenty opportunities for editors to incorporate a personal touch. All stakeholders are promised a speedier, more efficient review process. Full details of submission via ScholarOne can now be found on the journal web site.

This issue contains three papers, the first of which is John Dumay and Jim Rooney’s case study of how one Australian public sector organisation successfully overcame a potentially damaging human capital crisis in the form of a rapidly ageing workforce. As a result of a systematic process of knowledge transfer from older to younger employees, including new recruits and, where feasible, the creation of new knowledge to replace now redundant former knowledge, senior management was able to significantly reduce the effects of a process that inevitably confronts all organisations. Mohammad Nurunnabi provides details of recent intellectual capital reporting activity in Bangladesh. Drawing on a sample of ninety listed companies, he reports that such activity does not appear to have kept pace with the upward trend in economic activity and is most evident in the case of large organisations and in particular industrial sectors although, somewhat unusually, not the IT sector. Stefania Veltri and Antonella Silvestri’s paper explores the value relevance of intellectual capital information for investors in the Italian financial sector. Their research combines insights derived from the Ohlson model of value relevance with the same from the VAIC approach, to demonstrate that investors in the Italian financial sector attach greater value relevance to human capital efficiency than to structural capital efficiency, and that human capital efficiency plays an indirect role in the relation between intellectual capital and market value.

Robin Roslender