The Management of Intellectual Capital in the Early Phases of Project Marketing

This study aims at enhancing understanding and deriving new constructs about the management of intellectual capital in the early phases of project marketing. The research methodology employed is deductive; conceptual reasoning is based on existing literature. The study's knowledge base is drawn from the bodies of literature dealing with project, relationship, and industrial marketing, as well as from the literature dealing with mechanical engineering, network approach, systems selling, R&D, project portfolio, strategic, financial, and knowledge management. As a result, three processes, 32 summaries and 19 conclusions give to the management of intellectual capital meaning in the context of project marketing. These conclusions and synthesis are proposed to improve the existing concepts and models in project marketing.

Knowledge, processes and relationships in organizational change: Understanding how to facilitate management of intellectual capital in diverse organization structures and cultures.

This study examined relationships of organizational dependencies, change management and developed intellectual knowledge resources, in different intellectual capital based development programs on ICT-sector. Study was carried out in a research context, where high degree of external organizational contingencies existed and lots of changes in several development programs had taken place in the last years. From a scientific perspective the main contribution was that evidence between relationships of organizational dependencies, change model portfolio and developed knowledge resources could be suggested. From managerial perspective the primary implication was that in situations where sustainable competitive advantage is pursued by means of increasing knowledge based productivity of labor, firms should seek to pursue organizational settings where external dependencies have minimal amount of effect.

Modelling the simultaneous effects of intellectual capital and knowledge management on the organisational performance of Finnish companies

The aim of this study was to contribute to the current knowledge-based theory by focusing on a research gap that exists in the empirically proven determination of the simultaneous but differentiable effects of intellectual capital (IC) assets and knowledge management (KM) practices on organisational performance (OP). The analysis was built on the past research and theoreticised interactions between the latent constructs specified using the survey-based items that were measured from a sample of Finnish companies for IC and KM and the dependent construct for OP determined using information available from financial databases. Two widely used and commonly recommended measures in the literature on management science, i.e. the return on total assets (ROA) and the return on equity (ROE), were calculated for OP. Thus the investigation of the relationship between IC and KM impacting OP in relation to the hypotheses founded was possible to conduct using objectively derived performance indicators. Using financial OP measures also strengthened the dynamic features of data needed in analysing simultaneous and causal dependences between the modelled constructs specified using structural path models. The estimates were obtained for the parameters of structural path models using a partial least squares-based regression estimator. Results showed that the path dependencies between IC and OP or KM and OP were always insignificant when analysed separate to any other interactions or indirect effects caused by simultaneous modelling and regardless of the OP measure used that was either ROA or ROE. The dependency between the constructs for KM and IC appeared to be very strong and was always significant when modelled simultaneously with other possible interactions between the constructs and using either ROA or ROE to define OP. This study, however, did not find statistically unambiguous evidence for proving the hypothesised causal mediation effects suggesting, for instance, that the effects of KM practices on OP are mediated by the IC assets. Due to the fact that some indication about the fluctuations of causal effects was assessed, it was concluded that further studies are needed for verifying the fundamental and likely hidden causal effects between the constructs of interest. Therefore, it was also recommended that complementary modelling and data processing measures be conducted for elucidating whether the mediation effects occur between IC, KM and OP, the verification of which requires further investigations of measured items and can be build on the findings of this study.

Intellectual Capital Disclosures: The effect of mandatory Integrated Reporting

Purpose – The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how mandatory obligation to follow the International <IR> Framework while producing the corporate reports influence the intellectual capital disclosures in the reports. Research design – The study uses a disclosure scoreboard to score a selected sample of annual reports depending on whether it disclose intellectual capital information or not. The sample consists of companies listed in South Africa were it is mandatory to follow the integrated reporting framework and companies listen in Sweden where it is not mandatory to produce an integrated report. Empirical results and conclusion – The results of this thesis indicates that the mandatory use of the International <IR> Framework have an impact on the amount of intellectual capital disclosures. Further it concludes that higher level of compliance with the framework further increases the intellectual capital disclosure. Contribution – This study has been an early step towards concluding whether the use of integrated reporting has any effect on the amount of intellectual capital information disclosed in companies’ annual report.

Reporting intellectual capital in Spain

This study reports on the analysis of annual reports from 14- listed companies in Spainover a five-year period, from 1998 to 2002. Companies in the sample are selected on thebasis of their knowledge-based assets and incentives to report on Intellectual Capital.The empirical analysis is twofold:1) Firstly, we analyse the value of intellectual capital using a value-based approach,through the difference between market and book value over the period considered. Results show that there is a general decrease in the 'hidden value' of these companies, probably due to the general trend in stock markets.2) Secondly, we carry out a content-based analysis of the complete annual reports of the companies over the five year period. Preliminary findings seem to suggest that although the level of disclosure has increased over time, this is mainly in the form of narrative. Overall, the level of disclosure of intellectual capital remains low.

Assessing intellectual capital in a research institute environment in steel industry

Diplomityön tavoitteena oli tutkia aineettoman pääoman hallintaa terästeollisuuden tutkimuslaitosympäristössä, sekä luoda mittaristo kuvaamaan sen tilaa ja kehitystä. Työn rajausten mukaan aineeton pääoma jaettiin Annie Brookingin jaottelun mukaan, ja tarkasteluun valittiin teollisoikeudet sekä henkilöstövoimavarat. Empiirinen osa työstä perustui pääasiassa haastatteluihin sekä Case –yrityksen sisäisiin julkaisuihin. Näitä pyrittiin tulkitsemaan kvalitatiivisten tutkimusmenetelmien oppien mukaan. Tutkimustulosten perusteella voidaan todeta teollisoikeuksien hyödyntämisen olevan suhteellisen vähäistä terästeollisuuden parissa. Syitä tähän on työssä käsitelty melko laajasti. Henkilöstön kehittäminen pitkällä tähtäimellä sekä tiedonkulun tehostaminen henkilöstön keskuudessa ovat puolestaan asioita, joihin kiinnitetään kyseisellä teollisuudenalalla kiitettävässä määrin huomiota. Työn loppupuolella esitelty aineettoman pääoman mittaristo tarjoaa yritykselle työkalun, jonka avulla voidaan monipuolisesti arvioida tätä yrityksille nykyisin elintärkeää asiaa. Lopullista ratkaisumallia se ei aineettoman pääoman mittaamiseen tarjoa, mutta luo kuitenkin tärkeän ensiaskeleen kohti tulevaisuuden yhä kehittyneempiä mittausmenetelmiä.

Intellectual capital disclosures by South African companies:a longitudinal investigation

Most of the previous studies on intellectual capital disclosures have been conducted from developed countries' context. There is very limited empirical evidence in this area from the context of emerging economies in general and Africa in particular. This paper is one of the early attempts in this regard. The main purpose of this study is to examine the extent and nature of intellectual capitaldisclosures in ‘Top 20’ South African companies over a 5 years period (2002–2006). The study uses content analysis method to scrutinise the patterns of intellectual capital disclosures during the study period. The results show that intellectual capital disclosures in South Africa have increased over the 5 years study period with certain firms reporting considerably more than others. Out of the three broad categories of intellectual capital disclosures human capital appears to be the most popular category. This finding stands in sharp contrast to the previous studies in this area where external capital was found to be most popular category.

Aineettoman pääoman ja organisaatio-osaamisen hyödyntäminen

Tutkimuksen tarkoitus: Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää miten Tuomi Yhtiöt Oy:n aineetonpääoma ja organisaatio-osaaminen vaikuttavat yrityksen menestymiseen taantuman aikana 2008- 2009. Tutkimus ajoittuu maailman talouden kulminaatiopisteeseen, jossa voidaan tarkastella sekä mikro- että makrotalouden tunnuksilla miten yritys on menestynyt ja toiminut ajanjakson aikana. Tutkimuksen teoria on liiketaloustieteiden tutkimusmenetelmien mukaista, ja perustoiminnoiltaan normatiivista sekä empiiristä ongelmanratkaisua. Työssä käytettään laaja-alaisesti yrityksen faktatietoja, sekä aineettoman pääoman mittaamiseen tehtyä mittaristoa joka on rakennettu tutkimusta varten. Tuloksina saadaan yrityksen kannalta keskeiset organisaatio- ja aineettoman pääoman tunnusluvut, joita vertaillaan johtamisjärjestelmän tunnuslukuihin. Tutkimuksen yhteydessä on löydetty uusi asiakashallintamalli jolle ei ole saatavilla valmista sovellutusta. Yhteenvetona voidaan osoittaa yrityksen heikkoudet sekä menestyminentarkasteluajanjaksolla ja todistaa näiden yhteys kokonaisuuteen