| Abstract [eng] |
Summary There is an increasing understanding that intellectual capital is a key matter for success in today's economic environment. Intellectual capital is not just data or information in files and databases. It embraces all useful knowledge in all forms in the organization. Intellectual capital is vital in knowledge-based organizations and is becoming increasingly important in every other type of organization. Therefore, it is critically important that intellectual assets are well understood and properly managed if organizations want to compete successfully in today's world economy. Effective management of intellectual capital begins with understanding. For this reason, this paper has provided a definition of intellectual capital to help managers understand the breadth of management requirements. Several models for classifying the components of intellectual capital were then presented so management might understand the depth of management requirements. Finally, several measurement schemes were presented showing how intellectual capital can be viewed at both the component-by-component and organization levels. Management of intellectual capital is in its early stage, but interest is growing. Models and measurements are being developed with enthusiastic experimentation. The indication is that every organization should begin their quest for understanding and expertise in managing the pre-eminent asset for creating wealth in the future. In conclusion, there are five reasons why organizations may seek to measure intellectual capital: (1) to help formulate business strategy, (2) to develop key performance indicators that will help evaluate the execution of strategy, (3) to assist in evaluating mergers and acquisitions, (4) to link intellectual capital to an incentive and compensation plan, and (5) to communicate a firm’s amount of intellectual capital to external stakeholders. Intellectual capital currently is not being reported to external stakeholders, however, because there is no agreement on acceptable approaches to measuring intellectual capital and because the measures that are used do not yet meet accounting standards for reliability and verifiability. |
