Human capital value creation practices of software and service exporter firms in India

This study explored the human capital (HC) value creation practices of the top seventeen software and service exporter firms in India. The study used HC disclosure attributes as a tool to the contents of the annual reports for the year 2003-04, to evaluate the type and amount of HC disclosed by the software firms. The study conducted semi-structured interviews with the Heads of Human Resources of fourteen software firms to obtain a greater understanding of the similarities between reporting and managed HC practices. The study identified most reported and least reported attributes of HC using content analysis and explained their reporting of value creation using interviews and Resource Based View (RBV). The findings suggest that the HC reporting practices were consistent with interview findings. The frequency of HC attributes reported followed the extent of the management’s perception of HC value creation to the firm.