Competitiveness of Human Capital. Influence of Human Capital Investments On the Firm's Competitiveness

The role of human capital in the overall economic development towards knowledge economy and innovations is fundamental. Without human resources, which make up the essence of human capital, we would have no innovative products or services, no new strategies and processes. The development and continuous increase of human capital is one of the prerequisites of an economic growth. The aim of this research was to test the effects of human capital investments on the economic results of enterprises. The research was based on an extensive questionnaire survey, which was further completed with expert interviews. The interviewees were HR professionals from selected companies. The main hypothesis was formed as an assumption about a positive dependence between human capital investments and economic successfulness of companies represented with value added per employee. The hypothesis was verified at a high significance level. Further this work tries to find answers to several key questions related to the main hypothesis: What are the key competences of a competitive human capital in the Czech companies? How can companies efficiently invest into the human capital in order to increase the company's competitiveness? What is the role of companies as the initiators of human capital development? How did the economic crisis change the companies' attitude towards human capital investments? The work further proposes how to diminish the main inefficiencies of companies' investments in human capital. Great attention is also paid to the comparison of various sources that measure and compare the volume of human capital in the Czech Republic