Intellectual capital
Definition
Intellectual capital is A model used for describing organizational competency and consists of human, structural and relational capital, or the sum of all the intellectual material, such as knowledge, information, intellectual property, experience, which can be put to use to create wealth
Summary
Description
Intellectual capital can be seen as a representation of organizational competency. Here it is described in terms of human, structural and relational capital. The model described in Fig 1 is based on an intellectual capital model presented in Ref [1].
Human capital is the knowledge and competencies embedded in people and groups. It is the type of capital that people take with them when they leave the office.
Structural capital consists of the policies, formal and informal processes, data and information owned by the organization, culture, communities and networks. To emphasize the different nature of the items under structural capital, it has been divided into formal and informal part.
Relational capital is the external relationships the organisation has with other organisations and individuals. This can include e.g. the relationships between an operating organisation and the vendor or the relationships the organisation has with its retired experts.
The components of organizational competency are not independent of each other. Informal structural capital includes knowledge processes which affect human capital. The processes for managing human capital e.g. qualification requirements are part of the formal structural capital. Relational capital affects structural capital via information transfer from other organizations, e.g. maintaining the design bases information and transferring it from design organisations to the operating organisation. Relational capital can also increase human capital e.g. via cross-organizational networks.
References
[1] Carson, E., Ranzijn, R., Winefield, A., Marsden, H., Intellectual capital – Mapping employee and work group attributes, Intellectual Capital, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 443-463 (2004).
