P.G.M.C. Vergauwen

Linking intellectual capital and intellectual property to company performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to link empirically the value of intellectual capital and intellectual property to firm performance.Design/methodology/approach – Survey data from managers in the (German) pharmaceutical industry is used to conduct a regression analysis focusing on the correlation between human, structural and relational capital, intellectual property and firm performance.Findings – The results of the study show that including intellectual property in models linking intellectual capital to firm performance enhances the statistical validity of such models and their relevance for management.Practical implications – Intellectual capital is an important source of an organizations economic wealth and is therefore to be taken into serious consideration when formulating the firms strategy. This strategy formulation process can be enhanced by fully integrating intellectual property and intellectual capital into management models, as shown in this paper.Originality/value – This empirical pa...

Determinants of intellectual capital disclosure: evidence from Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine determinants of the decision to disclose intellectual capital in annual reports.Design/methodology/approach – The paper derives theoretical predictions from the previous literature and bases the study on archival data with a sample of 125 publicly listed Australian firms. The authors perform a content analysis of annual reports and complement the data with quantitative data from the sample firms.Findings – The paper finds that industry type plays a key role as a determinant for the disclosure of intellectual property in annual reports. In addition, firm size is another determinant for intellectual disclosure of firms. In contrast with earlier studies and theoretical predictions of voluntary disclosure, however, the paper does not find any relationship between the level of information asymmetry and intellectual capital disclosure.Research limitations/implications – One limitation refers to the content analysis. Analyzing the annual reports based on the spec...

Intellectual capital disclosure and intangible value drivers: an empirical study

Purpose – This paper aims to study the relationship between intellectual capital disclosures (ICDs) and the relative importance of intangible assets as company value drivers.Design/methodology/approach – Annual reports of Swedish, British and Danish firms are analysed to measure the extent of ICD. The level of intellectual capital (IC) in firms, measured with proxies for the categories of human, structural and relational capital.Findings – As to the components of IC, the empirical results indicate that there is a strong significant positive relationship between (the level of) structural capital possession of a firm and the firms ICD.Practical implications – This suggests that firms with a relatively high level of structural capital, disclose more information on IC in the annual report. The study found no such significant association between human and relational capital in firms and ICD regarding these items. Firms might have a transparency drawback in addressing these issues in the reports when these IC ...