Developing Human Capital through Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Human capital (HC) represents the tacit knowledge that is embedded in the minds of people in organisations. HC is important to organisations because it serves as a source of innovation and strategic renewal. Individuals carry HC when they join an organisation, though their level of HC theoretically increases with time in the organisation. Individuals also take their talent, skills and tacit knowledge with them when they leave an organisation. Thus HC is volatile in nature. It is therefore in the interests of human resource managers to recruit and develop the best and brightest employees as a means of achieving competitive advantage. One way of developing HC is through neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). NLP emerged in the 1970s from the University of California, USA. NLP suggests that subjective experience is encoded in terms of three main representation systems: visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic (VAK). NLP practitioners claim that people tend to have one preferred representation system over another in a given context. Relatively less research is conducted using the approach in developing HC in organisations. This paper critically reviews the literature and theoretically argues that since NLP primarily focuses on individual internal learning, it may be used as a practical approach to develop HC in organisations. Examples will be used in the paper to illustrate the benefits of utilising NLP in developing knowledge in organisations. Future research direction and limitations will also be discussed.