Human capital reporting: Should it be industry specific?

Boards are exploring ways to report the value of intangible assets to investors. This paper explores human capital reporting and notes human capital is not reported within or between industry sectors in a standardised way. As a further development in a suite of models, we propose a framework, the Star Model, as a step in the standardisation of interpreting and reporting on human capital to investors. In developing this model, the authors question whether human capital reports should be industry specific, given that the human capital drivers of value vary across industry groups. For the knowledge-intensive biotechnology industry in particular, there may be a case for parallel forms of news flow from Boards to markets: technical news, financial news and human capital news. We conclude that more empirical research into human capital analysis and reporting in other industry sectors will be needed.