This thesis contributes to the reporting of Intellectual Capital (IC) and includes four papers on the recognition and comparability of IC. IC, often called intangibles in the financial reporting discourse, reflects resources which create value in and for organizations. These resources originate out of human knowledge and capacities, which, through their uniqueness, can provide competitive advantages for an organization. As something intangible, IC is a challenge to report as it is not only a matter of reporting value that has been or can be realized but also a matter of reporting the creative processes focusing on present and future value. This challenge is a particular reflection of how and when to recognize IC as something reportable and is intensified if IC needs to be comparable. The thesis draws on the distinction that is made between mandatory and voluntary reporting when discussing recognition and comparability. Three of the studies relate to firms’ practices of reporting through annual reports. Since these reports contain both mandatory and voluntary sections, reflecting reporting both as a requirement as well as a possibility, different aspects of reported IC is emphasized. Using a wider range of documents, the fourth study relates to the enforcement of the mandatory reporting standards which the firms are required to apply in their reporting. As the overall finding in the thesis, three categories of recognition of IC are developed which reflect differences related to whether the reporting is mandatory, voluntary or, as this thesis argues, something in between. Reflected through the categories, comparability interrelates differently with recognition. The thesis contributes with the description of IC as a foundation for reporting which makes the matter of recognition of IC in reporting complex. It further highlights that through recognition of IC reporting is continuously expanding wherefore it is not possible to identify an end of an already expanded and demarcated reporting regime. In this expansion, by settling what is mandatory reporting through requested characteristics, voluntary reporting is defined.

Title: Intellectual capital disclosure in Swedish "knowledge companies" - a study on how intellectual capital is accounting for in three Swedish knowledge companies Problem: An organization has two kinds of assets; material assets and immaterial assets, also known as intellectual capital. There are straight forward ways of establishing the value of the material assets and stakeholders can easily find this information in either the income statement or the balance sheet. However modern businesses are increasingly reliant on their immaterial assets in order to generate value, since there is no equivalent to the balance sheet for immaterial assets - where do stakeholders find information on the subject, and how do the businesses themselves value intellectual capital? Purpose: In order to understand where and how companies disclose and value their intellectual capital, this thesis has analyzed the annual reports of three leading Swedish knowledge-companies from a two year period, and interviews have been conducted with key individuals at said companies. Methodology: Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this study. The qualitative part consists of primary data which was gathered through a questionnaire that was collected by e-mail, and secondary data was gathered from websites and financial reports of the selected companies. Qualitative data was gathered through the questionnaires alone, and processed through Spearman’s coefficient of rank correlation. Conclusion: The chosen companies have chosen not to disclose much of their intellectual capital in their annual reports, one company even removing the subsection intellectual capital from their annual report. It was found that human capital is the most valued component on intellectual capital. We have found that the selected companies do not use any specific method to valuate their intellectual capital. Keywords: intellectual capital, knowledge-company, annual report, disclosure, Sweden

In organisation, diversity in term of human resource is a new phenomenon which evolves and takes everyday more place in the global strategy of the company. For different reasons, human resource diversity could make the organization competitive in the market where the competition is all the time stronger. But the difficulties for human resource management officers is to elaborate human resource policies based on reaching the organization’s objectives and in the same time managing the workforce diversity in order to satisfy the all protagonists and in order to manage the diversity to make it a competitive advantage. They have to use appropriate tools in order to establish the employees’ loyalty and efficiency.

The purpose of this study is to reveal, through the use of case study methodology, how faculty collaboration may foster the development of intellectual capital and how organizational reward systems mediate this process. Collaboration has been chosen as the unit of analysis due to the collaborative nature of innovation. Innovation often produces a sustainable competitive advantage for organizations. The key in leveraging organizations' innovative capacity is through the development of intellectual capital. Human resource development is a viable method of fostering organizational resources such as intellectual capital. Due to economic, political, and organizational constraints upon traditional human resource development activities, intellectual capital may be best fostered via non-traditional methods. Organizational reward systems, as in the case of performance-based tenure and promotion, have been shown to both promote and hinder collaborative activities. A qualitative case study approach has been chosen due to contextual factors influencing collaboration. Semi-structured interviews, document and archival analysis served as the primary means of data collection. Faculty collaboration occurring at a large Texas university was examined via three main data sources: the college-level strategic plan, network analysis of interdepartmental collaboration, and targeted, semi-structured interviews. Data analysis revealed collaboration at the university often occurs via relationships, networks, and is fostered via resource allocation. Tenure and promotion as well as available resources seem to have a mediating effect on the decisions faculty made relating to research collaborations. Data supported the theoretical variables derived from the Theory of the Learning Organization. Recommendations for fostering collaboration center upon administering rewards in close proximity of collaboration behaviors. Further research must be performed to better understand the outcomes of successful collaboration as well as the different context in which fostering collaboration may be beneficial to organizational outcomes.

Besides the three traditional ICs(Intellectual Capital) including Human Capital, Structural Capital and Customer Capital, Social Capital(SC) has been recognized as a forth critical IC of an organization in the network economy. In the 21st century, various kinds of collaborations among organizations such as strategic alliance or virtual organization play a major role in the global competition marketplace; no one can do their business alone. Therefore, only an inter-organizational collaborative team with strong relationships and network ties among the members can more efficiently and effectively discover, evaluate and exploit the emerging entrepreneurial opportunities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a firm¡¦s social capital on its capabilities to discover, evaluate and exploit the entrepreneurial opportunities. Three dimensions of a firm¡¦s social capital are canalized. (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998) (1)structural dimension: includes network ties and network configurations (2)cognitive dimension: includes shared codes, languages and narratives (3)relational dimension: includes trust, norm, obligations, and identifications. Moreover, since a firm¡¦s absorptive capability of new knowledge and its past related knowledge base also influence the effectiveness of its exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunity, Absorptive Capability Theory (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) and current knowledge base of a firm are also used as two variables in the research model to increase the integrity of the model. An empirical survey methodology is applied to test the research model and hypotheses proposed in this study. Five out of nine hypotheses are validated in our research model with Path Analysis. The research result reveals that the structural dimension of a firm¡¦s social capital has the most impact on its abilities of entrepreneurial opportunities; on the other hand, a firm¡¦s absorptive capability of knowledge is affected by the structural and relational dimensions of social capital. Furthermore, the result validates that both absorptive capability and the abilities of entrepreneurial opportunities of a firm exhibit significant path dependency. This result will be useful to both the academic and business particularly in its advocacy of the cultivation of the structural dimension of a firm¡¦s social capital.

Today, companies are operating in a fast-changing environment of intense competition. It is essential that they continuously improve their competitive advantage by working hard to strengthen the soundness of their business systems, raise their competitiveness, and improve the quality of their manpower resources. The foundation of any company is its intellectual capital, and this has become an important direction in human resource development. This research paper aims at the relationship between intellectual capital and competitive advantage as well as the effect of innovation and service quality on intellectual capital and competitive advantage. It also examines the moderating effect of strategy on the relationships between intellectual capital, innovation and service quality. Finally, this paper offers some helpful observations and suggestions on how companies may raise their competitive advantage. This paper focuses on the banking industry. Two questionnaires were designed, one for supervisors and the other for consumers. For the former, random and convenience sampling were employed. Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of 200 financial institutions in Kaohsiung and Taipei, of which 82 responded, a return rate of 41%. For the convenience sample, through the assistance of friends and relatives, a further 48 questionnaire replies were received. For the customer survey, the questionnaire targeted those banks which had already responded to the supervisor questionnaire. Each bank used convenience sampling methods to survey 3-5 customers at its service center. In total, 122 banks returned 573 valid questionnaires. The data from these questionnaires were subjected to a variety of statistical analysis including Pearson's correlation, independent t-test , ANOVA and regression analysis with the following results: 1. Intellectual capital has significant and positive influence on innovation. 2. Intellectual capital has significant and positive influence on service quality. 3. Intellectual capital has significant and positive influence on competitive advantage. 4. Innovation has significant and positive influence on competitive advantage. 5. Service quality has significant and positive influence on competitive advantage. 6. Strategy plays a siginificant moderator role on the relationship between human capital and innovation. 7. Strategy plays a siginificant moderator role on the relationship between human capital and service quality. 8. Innovation has a significant mediating influence on the relationship between human capital and competitive advantage. Keywords: intellectual capital, strategy, innovation, service quality, competitive advantage

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) - Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, İşletme Anabilim Dalı, 2008. / Kaynakça var.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Industrial Relations and Human Resources." Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-84).

Thesis (D. Phil.)(Information Science)--University of Pretoria, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Globalization and the new knowledge economy have far-reaching implications for higher education mainly in the economic, political, social and technological aspects of knowledge production. Higher education institutions are the main providers of both knowledge and knowledge workers. While research and teaching are the main processes for producing knowledge at colleges and universities (Clark, 1983), information technology has been an enabling infrastructure for globalization and the main vehicle for the dissemination of knowledge as well as for facilitating knowledge in becoming a commodity (Altbach, 2006; Altbach & Teichler, 2001; McBurnie, 2001). This has led to the penetration of higher education institutions by market forces and the business sector. The commercial value of these knowledge assets in the new knowledge economy has brought economic, political, and social implications for higher education institutions. Now, they seek to strategically manage their organizational knowledge (Metcalfe, 2006; Trow, 2001). Information technology has become embedded in higher education's knowledge production and has led to reorganization of conventional academic structures, faculty work, and teaching practices.This research addresses diverse fields of study such as organizational change, sociology of organizations, and political economy of organizations, and focuses on a single developing country. The structurational model of technology, the power-process perspective of technology, the theory of academic capitalism, and the framework for strategic management of intellectual capital were joined in this study to examine: (a) the intellectual capital created through instructional production and delivery of information technology enhanced courses and its strategic management; and (b) the impact of information technology on the organization of higher education and faculty's academic work with regard to instructional production and delivery.Findings show that information technology is not regarded as an opportunity to develop intellectual capital; thus, dependency on foreign technology is favored. An academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime is still incipient in developing countries; therefore, intellectual property policies and commercialization of intellectual assets are new to higher education institutions. The vast majority of these institutions are teaching-oriented; hence, the incorporation of information technology has re-structured their organization and in turn had an impact on managerial capacity, academic work and the academic profession.