Integrating the development of human capital and social capital as a challenge for the Polish economy

The paper focuses on the issues regarding the development and accumulation of human capital in Poland in 1998-2012, which have been analysed in respect of the formation of social capital resources. The project aims to verify a hypothesis assuming that Poland is characterized by an insufficient synergy in the development of these two types of capital. It has been presumed that this inconsistency reduces the benefits flowing from human capital accumulation processes and may create a significant barrier to achieving a higher level of development. These speculations have been presented in a broader view on the factors which „mobilize” the human capital to function – from the perspective of the components comprising the intellectual capital. In order to illustrate the position of Poland and the challenges facing the country, the analysis has been formed in an international context. The comparative analyses also use the data provided by various social surveys, such as e.g. the European Social Value, the World Values Survey, the Social Diagnosis, the World Economic Forum’s reports, the results of the research by C. Yeh-Yun Lin and L. Edvinsson (conducted among the group of 40 countries in 1995-2008) as well as the author’s own research work.The confrontation of the paths of the development of human capital and social capital in Poland in 1998-2012 reveals a positive upward trend for these two types of capital. Such harmony towards the development may largely be attributed to the positive influence of human capital on social capital. Low social capital resources make it difficult for such a relationship to occur the other way round. However, this could hardly be called the integration of development processes, since the fundamental problem concerns the differential development dynamics of these two types of capital (higher for human capital, lower for social capital), as well as extremely low social capital resources in Poland at the beginning of the transformation. This indicates that differences in human and social capital may continue to increase in the future. The insufficient integration of the development of human and social capital seems as a severe limitation of the innovativeness and the effective use of human capital in action