Golden Capital, Living Asset Stewardship and Kindred Intangible Assets: Can We Measure Up?

Abstract

The aim of this exposition is to use a lens of measurement language to surface the thinking behind paradigms playing out today affecting the way governments and organisations, societies and citizens are led and managed. Indeed what is measured can say just as much about the measurer as to what is being measured. Identifying what is valuable enough to be counted, why some things are valued and privileged over others and how measurement theory is constructed within a particular worldview is a way of making transparent underlying values, assumptions and hegemony which, once surfaced, can be reviewed and discussed. Ideally this will lead to a better understanding of the tangible benefits of intangible assets. When reviewing the literature around intangible assets and their value to a knowledge-intensive economy and enterprise, we find that they are deeply embedded in people and their relationships. The literature will also show that valuing intangibles is by no means a new concept, but hitherto one that has not been privileged?or indeed may have been silenced?by industrial economy paradigm and economic rationalist discourses. To give voice to these silences and some form to these intangible assets, the term Living Asset Stewardship(LAS)will be explained and another, Golden Capital, will be introduced.