Organizational knowledge, sometimes referred to as the intellectual capital (or the 'IQ') of the enterprise, is the engine of innovation, improvements in service delivery and business processes in modern for-profit and not-for-profit corporations.  In turn, intellectual capital rests on the levels of investment and complementarity of three, more basic, forms of capital.  These are human capital,social capital and organizational capital.  Human capital is what individual employees know and can do.  Social capital has been defined as the goodwill displayed by stakeholders towards an organization and the trust they place in it though internal bonding ties or corporate identity and external network ties with other individuals and organizations.  Organizational capital is different from the other two because it is neither the property of individuals nor groups; instead it the institutionalized knowledge and codified experiences residing within organizations in the form of databases, filing cabinets, patents, manuals,  organizational structures, routines and processes. 

This chapter explores the links between these different forms of capital, and how people management and HR are core activities in creating, transferring and exploiting knowledge.  It also focuses on the problems of managing so-called 'knowledge' workers, who are the most unique and valuable employees in modern organizations but who are also among the most difficult to manage.