1. Introduction

It took some time before the decision was made to include ‘human capital’ in the title of this book. It is not a construct readily appreciated in boardrooms, although it is used widely in academia. In 1992, Professor Gary Becker, who received the Nobel Prize for his work on human capital and allied topics, said that human capital is accepted and therefore ‘uncontroversial’, although he went on, somewhat controversially, to allude to the potential of the human capital approach to the treating of people as machines (Becker 1993). One key reason for deciding to use the term was to appeal to the target audience of boards of directors, chief executive officers (CEOs) and those aspiring to board membership; given the finance-centric composition of boards and the debates within them, a book with ‘capital’ in the title would surely be more appealing.