Nearing the 21st century, advances in transportation and communications greatly facilitated workforce
mobility and collaboration. Corporations began viewing employees as assets rather than as cogs in a
machine. "Human resources management", consequently, became the dominant term for the function—
the ASPA even changing its name to SHRM in 1998.[9] "Human capital management" is sometimes used
synonymously with HR, although human capital typically refers to a more narrow view of humanresources; i.e., the knowledge the individuals embody and can contribute to an organization. Likewise,
other terms sometimes used to describe the field include "organizational management", "manpower
management", "talent management", "personnel management", and simply "people management".