Birgitta Olsson

Is HRCA a concept which summarizes the innovation work in the most intrinsic parts of firms during the last decades?: Why does HRCA still hit values and principles, even if it has had time to ripen?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the concept of HRCA – human resource costing and accounting – and to encourage debate in this research area. The knowledge dimensions or research areas of HRCA could be described by using a simple model or classification scheme. The model could be seen as a way to describe the links between accounting and financial calculation in company development, a development characterized as the innovation of the intrinsic area in a company. The three articles in this issue are also introduced, with a short overview of each of them.Design/methodology/approach – The objective is achieved by a pure theoretical approach. The subject of the paper is to try to explain the existence of the people dimension in the two knowledge areas of “accounting” and “costing” and link them to the “external” and “internal” organizational perspectives. In the HRCA area the aim is to see and understand the common body for these two areas of research: how to make people more tra...

New Working Time Arrangements, Health and Well-being

The increasing demand for more effective work procedures also affects work such that the entire 24h window is exploited for work and the work pattern ceases to be stable and predictable and instead becomes directly tailored to short term variation in production/service demand (termed “flexible ”). This results in increased night work, increased duration of shifts (often demanded by employees) and work hour fragmentation. We seem to know that night work and long hours are negative factors for health. However, summarizing a number of studies we find a need for reinterpretation. Thus, permanent night work may often be more acceptable than rotating hours, particularly if the night shift ends early. Long work shifts (12h) seemed to be preferable to normal (8h) ones, at least as long as not more than 2–3 shifts are worked in a row before rest and sleep was not interfered with. Furthermore, the ability to chose one’s shift schedule has strong positive effects. And, finally, reduced work hours with full pay has profound effects on social functioning, but very limited effects on health. The results suggest that influence on schedules and provisions for rest may improve most work schedules.