Managing Human Capital and Associated Risks in Organisations (A Saudi Company Case Study)

This study explored human capital management and associated risks in an organisation. The researcher reviewed salient literature on human capital and related risks, human capital management, and other relevant concepts. The research adopted qualitative mixed-methods research (QUAL-qual design) by selecting two samples for this study: human capital experts and ICE managers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with these two samples to identify drivers of human capital and risks associated with human capital within an organisation. The qualitative mixed-methods research (QUAL-qual design) in two samples was found to be appropriate as the study’s objectives and research questions have an exploratory nature, and the analysis of the reality of Human Capital Management (HCM) is subjective in nature. The used methodology to analyse the data was the rapid identification of themes from audio recordings (RITA). The thematic analysis method was adopted to analyse the collected data from the case study by identifying secondary and initial cycle categories, codes pattern maps, and themes. Regarding drivers of human capital management, it was found that it can start by raising three key questions: Are our employees willing to support our vision? Are our employees enabled to confront and struggle with problems? Are our employees enabled to do their jobs? Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that managing human capital sounds cultural-based, so it might include different drivers or components in various organisations as it depends on their working environment. Consequently, adopting a particular framework for human capital drivers might not be effective in different cultures or contexts. The importance of some drivers might vary from one culture to another. Hence, it is recommended to raise these three questions and define human capital drivers within the community and culture of that organisation/company in order to assess the credibility of the framework to a particular culture or society. The findings showed that there are ten drivers of human capital management within the managerial practice of Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, the drivers extracted from the literature in chapter two do not match the findings in terms of categorising and grouping—for example, managing the six stages of the employee life cycle was not mentioned exactly in chapter two. However, these stages were categorised under diverse groups like human capital development and career management drivers. Moreover, it sounds that developing human capital management effectively by managing its risk is considered more effective than following a strategic approach. It will give strong buy-in by the top management of human capital importance and criticality. Therefore, it is recommended to use human capital risks as a nudging strategy to guarantee sustainable support from top management to enhance human capital management. As regards the risks of human capital, the findings showed that there are thirteen risks associated with human capital management. However, the human capital risks extracted from the literature in chapter two do not match the findings precisely as there are unknown human capital risks. The variation between the literature and the findings of this study might be attributed to two reasons. The first reason might be that human resource management and risk management have received limited attention from academics and practitioners in the management literature, which shows a gap in the literature and calls for further studies on this subject. Second, human capital management's risks register is cultural and context-based, requiring a standalone risk assessment to identify, prioritise, and manage risks. Finally, the researcher attempted to diagnose the current human capital management situation of ICE, along with associated risks. Findings showed that there are 15 areas of development to improve human capital management within ICE. These areas of development relate to great extant drivers of human capital management. Likewise, findings showed that 14 potential risks need to be managed within ICE. Based on the current situation, a set of actions was proposed to enhance and improve human capital management and mitigate potential risks