Jan Mouritsen

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

Abstract 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 firms 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.

Disclosure of information on intellectual capital in Danish IPO prospectuses

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether information on intellectual capital (non‐financial information on knowledge based resources) is disclosed in Danish IPO prospectuses. Further, to analyse whether this voluntary disclosure has changed in the period from 1999 to 2001 and to analyse what factors can explain the amount of disclosure in the prospectuses.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses content analysis to compile a measure of disclosure on each prospectus and statistical analysis to test whether there is an association between disclosure and company type, the existence of managerial ownership before the IPO, the size of the company or the age of the firm.Findings – Based on statistical analysis, it is concluded that the extent of managerial ownership prior to the IPO and industry type affects the amount of voluntary intellectual capital disclosure, while company size and age do not affect disclosure. The results are interpreted in the light of the increasing importance of di...

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.

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.

Problematising intellectual capital research: ostensive versus performative IC

Purpose – This paper develops a problematisation of research about intellectual capital (IC) with a view to extending the types of questions that can be posed and explanations that can be given about the roles and effects of IC. The aim is to contribute to the debate on how it is possible and fruitful to study IC.Design/methodology/approach – The paper compares an ostensive and a performative approach to IC research and develops an analysis and critique of ideas in IC research on this basis.Findings – The paper concludes that it is possible and advisable to develop research that has an ambition to understand IC as a concept and not only as an application of a pre‐set idea. It suggests that a performative approach to IC will enhance possibilities of developing new and interesting propositions about how IC works and is involved in organisational and social transformation.Originality/value – The main implication of this paper is that research in IC can take up new forms of inquiry that will complement and ex...

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.

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.

The flexible firm: Strategies for a subcontractor's management control

A ‘‘flexible firm’’ is one which orients itself towards customers, new technology, lateral organisational arrangements and innovation. It is the ‘‘new organisation’’ where the customers and empowered employees—rather than organisational bureaucracy and capital markets—are said to govern the firm. BusinessPrint is a firm committed to flexibility. However, what flexibility is, how it is achieved and what its eAect is on the firm’s profitability are diAcult to resolve as flexibility may conflict with productivity. In BusinessPrint, flexibility is debated against two modes of management control: one is the ‘‘virtual organisation’’ and the other is the ‘‘political organisation’’. The former is predicated upon the possibility to inscribe not only the firm’s internal production processes but also its relations to customers and subcontractors in an information system and to let that inscription organise inter-organisational spaces of flows. In contrast, the latter is mobilised via labour processes in local places designed to motivate workers to show unconditional adaptability and improvisation in production activities. # 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of actor‐network theory in accounting research

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss how Bruno Latours version of actor‐network theory has influenced accounting research. It also seeks to show that Latours writings contain unexplored potential that may inspire future accounting research.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of a critical literature review and discussion.Findings – Since the early 1990s, actor‐network theory, particularly the work of Bruno Latour, has inspired accounting researchers and led to a number of innovative studies of accounting phenomena. In particular, Latours book, Science in Action, has been the primary source of inspiration for accounting research. This means that there is unexplored potential in Latours more recent writings which may lead to further inspiration and research in the field of accounting.Research limitations/implications – The paper reviews only a few of the relatively large number of accounting papers that apply actor‐network theory. A different sample might have given a somewhat differe...

Dealing with the knowledge economy: intellectual capital versus balanced scorecard

Purpose – This paper compares balanced scorecard and intellectual capital and finds important differences between their theoretical underpinnings, which suggest that the breath of indicators will work differently in organisations.Design/methodology/approach – Analysing texts about balanced scorecard and intellectual capital, the paper discusses not the obvious similarities – that they are both integrated performance management systems – but four more aspects: strategy, organisation, management, and indicators. Comparing these four dimensions the paper discusses the differences arising from the very different theories of strategy that they presuppose: competitive advantage versus competency strategy.Findings – The paper suggests that the very different notions of strategy that underpin the balanced scorecard and the intellectual capital approach make such comprehensive performance management systems behave in very different ways – the difference between a tightly coupled and a loosely coupled system accoun...