Management, Valuation, and Risk for Human Capital and Human Assets considers two main areas, the management of individuals within organizations to best accomplish organizational goals and the valuation of those human assets. Russ argued that the market has failed to properly assess the value of human assets and capital. Looking to the latter half of the twentieth century and the changing nature of the economy and labour force as well as the rapid growth of technological invention and integration, Russ reasoned it was necessary to discover a way for organizations to report the value of human capital in a way that is meaningful to both organizational decision-makers for the effective and efficient deployment of those human capital assets and for stakeholders as they seek to understand the true value of an organization.

According to Russ, there are five markets that impact the need for understanding the value of human capital and assets: financial markets, products/services markets and labour markets, the latter of which are segmented into labour (unskilled), skilled labour and talent markets. While labour and skilled labour markets are important, their valuation is less difficult. Traditional accounting practices considering them as expenses within the product or service cost of goods is considered sufficient. The talent market, a growing and important market for service production and the knowledge-based economy, is considered an ‘inefficient market’ (p. 7), one where the value of the products produced are not adequately captured in pricing structures in part because it is extremely difficult to value the inputs of the human assets and capital used to produce them.

The book begins with a foundation to understanding the need to look closely at the topic of human asset and capital management, its valuation and risk assessment. From there, a new framework for understanding how markets have changed and why a multidisciplinary approach is necessary is presented. The remainder of the book is divided into two sections. Three chapters look at human assets management (traditionally an Human Resource Development (HRD) topic) and the last five chapters deal with the valuation and risk associated with human capital and assets (traditionally a management and accounting problem). However, given that the overarching topic is about human assets and human capital, this topic is an important topic for HRD scholar-practitioners as we become strategic business partners assisting our organizations in the accurate valuation of cost of goods and services, the true value of the organization including its human assets and capital, and effective deployment of those assets and capital to serve the organization’s business goals.