calls, instructor led training, etc.; Knowledge Activities are related to time expenditures by a single person and include finding/retrieving information, research, email, messaging, blogging, information analysis, etc.; and Process activities are knowledge and collaborative activities that result due to organizational context such as errors/rework, manual data transformation, stress, politics, etc. Corporate finance In corporate finance, human capital is one of the three primary components of intellectual capital (which, in addition to tangible assets, comprise the entire value of a company). Human capital is the value that the employees of a business provide through the application of skills, know-how and expertise. It is an organization's combined human capability for solving business problems. Human capital is inherent in people and cannot be owned by an organization. Therefore, human capital leaves an organization when people leave. Human capital also encompasses how effectively an organization uses its people resources as measured by creativity and innovation. A company's reputation as an employer affects the human capital it draws. Criticism Some labor economists have criticized the Chicago-school theory, claiming that it tries to explain all differences in wages and salaries in terms of human capital. One of the leading alternatives, advanced by Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz, is "signaling theory". According to signaling theory, education does not lead to increased human capital, but rather acts as a mechanism by which workers with superior innate abilities can signal those abilities to prospective employers and so gain above average wages. The concept of human capital can be infinitely elastic, including unmeasurable variables such as personal character or connections with insiders (via family or fraternity). This theory has had a significant share of study in the field proving that wages can be higher for employees on aspects other than human capital. Some variables that have been identified in the literature of the past few decades include, gender and nativity wage differentials, discrimination in the work place, and socioeconomic status. The prestige of a credential may be as important as the knowledge gained in determining the value of an education. This points to the existence of market imperfections such as non-competing groups and labor-market segmentation. In segmented labor markets, the "return on human capital" differs between comparably skilled labor-market groups or segments. An example of this is discrimination against minority or female employees. Following Becker, the human capital literature often distinguishes between "specific" and "general" human capital. Specific human capital