M. Paloma Sánchez

Intellectual capital in universities

Purpose – The growing interest regarding intangibles and intellectual capital (IC) has extended from firms to public institutions such as universities and research centres during the last decade. Since universities are considered critical institutional actors in national innovation systems, European higher education and research institutions are going through an important transformation process with the aim of making them more comparable, flexible, transparent and competitive. The objective of the paper is two‐fold. On the one hand, its aim is to address the importance of measuring and managing IC in universities to improve research management and contribute to comparative analysis in European universities, and on the other hand, to highlight some methodological and conceptual considerations in relation to the analytical framework developed within an ongoing experience – the Observatory of European Universities (OEU).Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses a specific case within the OEU: the Auto...

Intellectual capital dynamics in universities: a reporting model

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the increasing attention to universities and research organizations at political level and the growing implementation in these institutions of intellectual capital (IC) management and reporting mechanisms, traditionally used by private companies. The objective of the paper is twofold. On one hand, to present an IC report specially designed for universities, suggesting a battery of indicators for resources related to research activity, and, on the other hand, to move one step forward and discuss current challenges in relation to establishing standards for universities to manage and report on their IC and the difficulties in capturing the process dynamics.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews recent literature both on conceptual issues and experiences in relation to IC. The Austrian IC report, the observatory of European university exercise and some recent experiences of the Madrid regional government concerning Madrid universities are analysed. Bo...

Intangibles in universities: current challenges for measuring and reporting

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether the mechanisms used to measure and manage intangibles in companies can be applied to universities and other research institutions. Design/methodology/approach – The characteristics of the issues is addressed by companies in relation to their intellectual capital (IC) and how they manage them are reviewed to discuss whether universities can apply the same framework. External pressures for change and barriers universities encounter, particularly due to the current governance system, are discussed. The experience of some universities are briefly described. Findings – The companies’ framework is possible to be used by universities, with some specificity. Research limitations/implications – The number of universities actually applying this framework is small and therefore the results cannot be generalized. Practical implications – Policy measures are needed to encourage research institutions and universities to measure and manage their IC. In a knowledge-based society, the main knowledge producers should be more accountable for their activities. Originality/value – The use of IC concepts to analyze universities’ performance is still scarce. This is an attempt to fill such lacuna.

National intellectual capital assessment models: a literature review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on national intellectual capital (NIC) in order to identify and compare the main models to measure and report IC at the country level and to examine the differences from and similarities to the IC approach for firms. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review was carried out using three scientific databases and the five most important journals. Additional information was also reviewed. The search covered the period from January 2000 to December 2012. The models to measure intangibles were analyzed and compared using qualitative and quantitative techniques. Findings – The literature review shows that although such literature is still nascent and relatively scarce, there is growing interest in measuring, reporting, and managing IC for countries as a whole. NIC studies have been published in a small number of journals and more theoretical work is required. There are two main types of methods to assess and report on NIC. Despite...

Internationalisation of universities: the case of Spain

Industry?university relations have been undergoing a considerable internationalisation process in recent decades, following the trend of general internationalisation of university activities. To study these changes and suggest a framework to analyse the internationalisation of universities, this paper applies the taxonomy developed by Archibugi and Michie (1995) for techno-globalism to the internationalisation of knowledge and integrates it with the different university missions: teaching, research and third mission (Schoen et al., 2007). After providing some examples of governmental programmes to encourage such internationalisation using the proposed framework, the paper studies the Spanish case, with an emphasis on the knowledge-transfer to industry and the move towards internationalisation of university?industry relations.