Intellectual Capital Statements Research Articles

The relevance of intellectual capital disclosure: a paradox?

Many firms have started disclosing information on intellectual capital. Financial analysts, however, ask for more disclosure related to strategy and often find intellectual capital statement less relevant. Drawing on results from a study of disclosure of information on intellectual capital in Danish initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses, this commentary argues that the perceived irrelevance of intellectual capital is somewhat paradoxical since intellectual capital reports and recent prospectuses share remarkable similarities with respect to the intellectual capital indicators disclosed. Further, the commentary argues that, for intellectual capital disclosure to be perceived as relevant from a capital market perspective, the information should be disclosed as an integral part of a framework illuminating the value creation processes of the firm. The emerging practice with respect to intellectual capital offers such a framework for disclosing the business model of the knowledge‐based company.

Intellectual Capital Disclosure in Canadian Corporations

There has been increased attention and focus on the importance of intellectual capital disclosure. Several Scandinavian companies have ventured forward by publishing intellectual capital statements. However, despite the global appeal and changing beliefs surrounding the value of intellectual capital, it continues to be excluded from Canadian corporate annual reports. This paper outlines a study in which content analysis was conducted on the annual reports of 10,000 Canadian corporations. A list of intellectual capital related terms was searched within the annual reports yielding a significantly small number of instances in which intellectual capital disclosure took place. A major recommendation for corporations who are concerned with their relationship with the capital markets is to develop strategic and tactical initiatives that provide for voluntary disclosure of intellectual capital. These initiatives may initially be used for internal management purposes only, however, an external stakeholder‐focus report will more than likely should be the ultimate goal.

Developing and managing knowledge through intellectual capital statements

On the basis of empirical illustrations from five Danish firms this paper discusses how the objects of intellectual capital statements were constructed. These objects were the activities that defined knowledge management, and the intellectual capital statements monitored these through depicting a particular narrativised strategy for managing knowledge – called a knowledge narrative – and through a monitoring system that reflected the activities set in motion to mobilise the strategy for managing knowledge. Particularly, the paper discusses the idea of knowledge as a narrative. It is suggested that for knowledge to count, it has to be able to produce something. This something is found the value‐to‐the‐user of the products and services.

Reading an intellectual capital statement

This paper introduces a framework for analysing intellectual capital statements. It is suggested that the three‐way model of intellectual capital (human, organisations and structural) can be developed in its descriptive and its prescriptive qualities. Another model is offered which relate intellectual capital indicators to the firm’s knowledge strategy. This IC accounting system describes the transactions that allow the firm’s knowledge strategy to be implemented and it prescribes an agenda from which it is possible to monitor the effects around intellectual resources, to qualify and upgrade them and to survey the portfolio of intellectual resources. An example of Systematic Software Engineering’s two intellectual capital statements from 1999 and 2000 is used to illustrate how intellectual capital statements may be read from this perspective.

Valuing the future: intellectual capital supplements at Skandia

Skandia’s intellectual capital supplements are pioneering forms of communication that inform internal as well as external readers of the attempts to manage and create value from intellectual resources. These supplements to the financial accounting statement communicate not only in numbers but also in stories and illustrations about the challenges facing the firm. They help develop a narrative for the path ahead for Skandia as a “capable” firm that thrives through intellectual resources found in humans, structures and relations. In this paper we discuss how this is possible and we suggest that intellectual capital statements are not only new types of communication; they also anticipate new “contracts” between labour and management where employees are persuaded to help managers craft the strategies to be pursued in the marketplace of the future.

Intellectual capital and the ‘capable firm’: narrating, visualising and numbering for managing knowledge

Intellectual capital statements are ‘new’ forms of reporting whose object is knowledge management activities. Based on 17 firms’ work to develop intellectual capital statements, this paper analyses them as managerial technologies making knowledge amenable to intervention. Aspects of actor-network-theory are mobilised to suggest that the intellectual capital statement is a centre of translation, which mobilises knowledge management via three interrelated elements: knowledge narratives, visualisations and numbers. Intellectual capital statements report on the mechanisms put in place to make knowledge manageable. Writing intellectual capital is a local story, which often concerns making knowledge collective and a process of allowing it to be oriented towards organisational ends. In such a story, knowledge is about a firm's capabilities and abilities to make a difference to a user. When writing an intellectual capital statement, firms locate employees, customers, processes and technologies and orient them towards a user. However, the statement as such is a means of ‘dis-locating’ knowledge resources making them amenable to intervention. There are certain broad types of intervention that allows a classification of strategies of intervention to be proposed. These terms are portfolio management, improvement activities and productivity. Such forms of intervention circumscribe the aspiration to transform knowledge from something internal to the person into something that is the effect of a collective arrangement. They allow—through intellectual capital statements—the dark, tacit knowing of individuals to come into the open space of calculation and action at a distance.

Constructing intellectual capital statements

This article analyses the development of intellectual capital statements in 19 Danish firms. These statements are discussed in order to show how they work in relation to knowledge-management activities. Based on survey and interview data from the firms that have collaborated in developing intellectual capital statements, the article focuses on why and how these firms embarked on producing such statements. Three brief case studies illustrate the complexities of this type of reporting, which integrates a three-way relationship between narratives/stories, sketches, and metrics.

Intellectual Capital Statements and Knowledge Management: ‘Measuring’, ‘Reporting’, ‘Acting’

This paper discusses the relationship between intellectual capital and knowledge management. Based on five empirical examples, it suggests that intellectual capital statements are complex forms of measuring, reporting and acting at the same time. Measurement and process conflate, because there is little attempt to measure the “true” value of intellectual capital in empirical intellectual capital statements. In contrast, there is attention to a broad sense of reporting and communication, which consist not only of measures but also of stories and sketches. The “object” to be illuminated and managed via intellectual capital statements is knowledge management activities rather than knowledge itself.