Available assets, materials, personnel, time, or capabilities that can be utilized to accomplish tasks or achieve objectives.
From Old French 'ressource' meaning 'relief' or 'recovery,' originally referring to a source of help in times of need. The business usage evolved during the 20th century to encompass all inputs required for work, reflecting increasingly systematic approaches to planning and allocation in organizations.
The abstraction of 'resources' allows managers to think about wildly different inputs - people, money, time, equipment - as interchangeable units, which enables sophisticated planning but can dehumanize workers by treating them as 'human resources.' The phrase has become so universal that we rarely notice how it reduces everything to potential inputs for productivity.
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