The increasing role of knowledge in the labour activity of a worker and company’s personnel

The authors have presented the process of knowledge accumulation in the form of four levels of learning characteristics of every person. In addition to the theoretical, this structuring is of practical importance for the development of a society as a whole, since it shows that concentration of efforts on knowledge management at the enterprise level cannot lead to meaningful results if the previous steps do not form a sufficient basis for the development of knowledge potential. The authors track the evolution and the role of such concept as human capital; investigate the causes of an ambiguous perception of this notion by modern economists and social scientists. According to the authors, the concept of human capital reflects only the visible part of a learning process, associated with cash flows (both direct and alternative) aimed at education, therefore, embodies the contradictions and limits that reduce its practical significance. The article considers current trends for examining the processes of knowledge management from the perspective of a value approach, which lead to a great extent to synthetic evaluation of the human capital and potential level, having little practical usefulness. According to the authors it’s necessary to take systemic measurements that take into account social and personal aspects of human development.