Managing Human Capital and Learning: A Key Challenge of Modern Management

The first chapter of the book Managing Learning Enterprises entitled “Managing Human Capital and Learning: A Key Challenge of Modern Management” from the first part entitled “Characteristics of a Learning Enterprise” lays the foundation for defining the characteristics of learning organizations and learning enterprises by identifying the key modern trends facing modern enterprises. Among the most important trends and challenges is the acceleration of development in many areas, making progress trends unclear and often erratic. Companies are faced with the challenge of increasing digitalization and the development of the information economy with highly intellectualized work and the need to simultaneously improve productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness as key performance indicators of the company. In this environment, the management of human resources or human talent becomes the greatest challenge of modern management. The various facets of the learning process should be effectively managed and administered from a systems perspective: workplace learning, training, mentoring, learning from mistakes, critical reflection, joint problematization and sense-making, etc. It is also important to nurture relationships with stakeholders and learn with and from them to create synergies and find inclusive solutions. The whole process should be meaningful, purposeful, and guided by commonly defined values. Such an environment is the essence of developing and leading companies as learning organizations.