This research has investigated factors that affect the successful commercialization of intellectual capital. The concept of social constructs of meaning for the interview participants provides the fundamental perspective of this research. The research was undertaken on the basis of a constructivist ontology, the epistemology was interpretivist, and a qualitative methodology was used. A constructivist ontology was selected due to the research aim to understand the perceptions of the interview participants. The interpretivist approach provided the framework to interpret meaning of the perceptions in the appropriate business context. The data collection methods included unstructured interviews of people holding key decision making positions within their organizations. The conceptual nature of intellectual capital and commercialization enabled the research to be viewed from a phenomenological perspective and aspects of grounded theory were applied in seeking meaning from interviewee perceptions to surface a theoretical model. The data analysis included coding of the interview transcripts utilizing NVivo qualitative research software and sorting the data into nodes. The nodes represented categories of information which became the foundations of the constructs. These nodes were examined for relationship and meaning until a theoretical model emerged from the data. The findings culminated in six (6) main constructs which were subsequently aggregated to form a composite model of factors which influence the commercialization process. / In addition a further discovery was made in terms of an `Intellectual Capital Approach' model which enables a classification and hierarchical relationship of intellectual capital to be mapped as a starting point for problem solving and strategy formulation. The results of this research have immediate application to business in terms of informing management about identification of intellectual capital and to consider alternative scenarios for wealth creation by way of commercialization.

The existing literature proposes a broad spectrum of methodologies to measure firm's superior operating capabilities, referring to them under different names such as 'knowledge assets', 'intellectual capital', 'organisation capital', etc. Through the work reported in this thesis, I intend to contribute to the research field by exploring one specific measure of a firm's operating capabilities proposed by Lev, Radhakrishnan and Zhang (Abacus, 2009). These researchers empirically construct an organisation capital measure and argue it has predictive ability for future performance and is able to explain future abnormal stock returns in the USA. I extend their research to the UK. In doing so, I also critically discuss the organisation capital estimation process and propose potential improvements to the technique. I find evidence of its construct validity in the UK. I examine the organisation capital measure's predictive ability for future performance. The results suggest that this measure is positively associated with future sales growth in the UK. Additionally, the organisation capital measure seems to explain persistence of the operating income and sales of firms in the UK. Via value relevance tests, I obtain empirical evidence that the organisation capital measure is positively associated with equity market value in the UK. Moreover, it is positively associated with the earnings multiplier in value relevance tests. This finding is consistent with empirical evidence that the organisation capital measure is positively associated with one-year ahead earnings and positively affects earnings persistence in such an association in the UK. Finally, I fail to find evidence of the organisation capital measure's ability to explain future excess stock returns in the UK. This suggests that information on firm-specific operating capabilities captured by the organisation capital measure is recognised by the capital market participants and contemporaneously incorporated into stock prices. This result, however, contrasts with the Lev et al. (2009) findings in the USA that organisation capital is mispriced.

En la presente tesis se analizan los aspectos más relevantes de la gestión del conocimiento, teniendo en cuenta las fases de la dirección estratégica.Se estudian también aspectos del capital humano y se ofrece una serie de procedimientos para la solución de problemas de índole emocional que pueden afectar al personal de la empresa. Dichos procedimientos pueden ser aplicables a las empresas objeto de estudio, es decir, a las empresas del sector textil y de la confección en España, realizándose un estudio que permite determinar cuáles son los rasgos principales del conocimiento de las personas, en función de los cargos directivos y mandos intermedios, estudios realizados, retribución y años de antigüedad, pudiendo servir de punto de partida para el estudio de un sistema de gestión del capital humano vinculado a la estrategia de la empresa.PALABRAS CLAVE: Dirección estratégica, capital humano, capital emocional, recursos humanos, gestión del conocimiento, capital intangible. / THESIS SUMMARY (English)On this thesis will be analysed the most relevant points related to knowledge management.A study of appearance of a human capital, also propose some methods to solve problems that are related to emotional feelings, including affecting group of employees. These methods can be applied on companies studies, that means, textiles and clothing companies in Spain. That can determine the most important range of the employees knowledge, and its related to each level of administration. Also analysing studies, wages and years worked. It can serve as a start for a study of a management system of human capital co-related to the company strategy.