Human Resources: A Contemporary History

Historian Brigitta Bernet from the Research Center on Social and Economic History (Forschungsstelle für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte) examines the ambivalent relationship between appreciation and value creation in the modern working world. A starting point for her research is the observation that the economic boom of the post-war period was accompanied by a psychological boom, as categories, perceptions, and strategies from the field of psychology took hold in everyday life. In the working world, the psychological matrix was coupled with an economically driven view of the worker-as-subject – a view that saw the employee as a human resource and converted human capital into a company asset. In this setting, a growing awareness of the subjective factor and efforts to use it more efficiently are inextricably linked. Taking Switzerland as an example, Brigitta Bernet examines the discovery, modeling, and management of human capital as a corporate resource, focusing in particular on the historical changes in the interplay between an individual’s employment status and sense of self.