Stefania Veltri

Measuring Intellectual Capital in the University Sector Using a Fuzzy Logic Expert System

The main aim of this study is to find a method to measure the intellectual capital (IC) of an organization which is able to combine management and measurement views, to reflect the newest concepts regarding IC, and to take into consideration the ‘vague’ interactions between IC categories. We posit the idea that a fuzzy expert system model can address these issues, since it takes account of the qualitative nature of most IC indicators and the different IC subcategories. The main advantage of an IC score developed through a FES model is to provide a reliable IC index. The model presented in this article applied to data derived from the Austrian universities’ IC reports is a pilot model, sufficiently flexible for individual adaptations and adjustments. The main limitation of the study is that further tests can be carried out only in the presence of available and comparable IC data which are currently not available.

The Free State University integrated reporting: a critical consideration

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the integrated report (IR) of a South African public university (UFS), by comparing it with the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) framework, to verify whether UFS IR matches the IIRC framework main aims, which is integrating IC and non-IC information into a single report for stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs the case study approach, which is appropriate when a researcher needs to conduct a holistic and in-depth analysis of a complex phenomenon in its real-life context. As such, this method is particularly suitable for exploring intellectual and social capitals, which is complex and context-dependent by nature. Findings – UFS IR includes the content elements of the IIRC framework as labels, but it does not deepen their meaning. As regards the IIRC guidelines principles, the analysis of the UFS IR shows that it does not seem to follow them. Briefly, the data do not have an outlook orientation, the information is no...

The Value Relevance of Intellectual Capital on the Firm's Market Value: An Empirical Survey on the Italian Listed Firms

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the value relevance of intellectual capital (IC) of Italian listed firms. The paper applies the Ohlson model (1995) to 524 firm-year observations of Italian listed companies for the three-year period 2006-2008 using a panel econometric model. The findings show that the fundamental variables of the Ohlson model (book value and earning) are positively related to the market value. On the contrary, the IC variables, which reflect human capital, innovation capital, process capital and relation capital, do not have a meaningful relation with the market value, except for the last one. Concluding, Italian investors do not seem to be able to detect and incorporate the information on IC as represented in the IC proxies chosen for the research into their business valuation process.

The Intangible Global Report – An Integrated Corporate Communication Framework

Purpose - Intangibles are the main value drivers of a firm. This consideration implies that it becomes more and more important/ urgent to measure and report intellectual capital. The new reporting statement (intellectual capital report) is not yet commonly used by firms, but many, on a voluntary basis, already publish, environmental, social and sustainability reports, which contain much information on intangibles. Starting from this point, our main aim here is to demonstrate that it is possible to integrate the information contained in both reports in a single ad hoc integrated document having both external and internal communication aims.Methodology – The paper addresses three research questions, namely whether the theoretical premises exist for the integration of the two different frameworks, which frameworks should be chosen as a starting point and which features should have an integrated framework. Theoretical premises for integration have been found in the research based view (RBV) theory. To chose the social report and intellectual capital report framework to use as starting points, we analyze the frameworks from the IC and CSR literature. We then chose the frameworks (GRI3 and Meritum reports) founded on an evolved notions of, respectively, corporate responsibility and intellectual capital, which share the same features: the orientation towards stakeholders, the managerial approach, and the focus on intangible activities that a new integrated framework should respect. Findings – Starting from the selected CSR and ICR frameworks, the authors planned and designed a new, ad hoc model of corporate communication, able to integrate the social and intangible dimensions in a single document, named Intangible Global Report (IGR). The IGR framework is composed of five dimensions, three derived from the ICR (human capital, structural capital, relational capital) and two from the GRI report (environmental, social). The different aspects of each dimensions are surveyed in terms of intangible resources, activities and impacts, measured by financial and non-financial indicators.Originality/value – The main originality of the paper consists in providing a general framework for firms to integrate all their intangible information in a single document: the IGR framework, focused on the firm’s strategy, which allows the stakeholder to visualize all the firm’s intangibles, how a company conducts its activities and the impacts that such activities have on the environmental, social and IC dimensions.

Direct and Indirect Effects of Human Capital on Firm Value: Evidence from Italian Companies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether information on intellectual capital (IC) is value relevant for investors and the role played by the single components of IC (human capital, organizational capital, relational capital) in creating firm value. Design/methodology/approach –The Ohlson model (1995) has been employed to investigate the relationship between the current accounting measures (book value and earnings) and future measures of profitability, proxied by IC. The value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) approach is used to determine the firm’s efficiency in using IC resources. The sample analysis analyzed is constituted of financial sector companies listed on the Italian Stock Exchange for the period 2006-2008. Findings – The findings fully confirm the existence of a positive relationship between accounting values and market value on the one hand and IC components as measured by VAIC™ and market value on the other. Results show that investors attach more value relevance to human capital efficiency (HCE) than to structural capital efficiency (SCE) and that HCE plays an indirect role in the relation between IC and market value. Research limitations/implications – The paper is focused on one sector (financial) and one country (Italy). The focus on the entire financial sector allows us to validate results from an Italian perspective and to extend them for similar banking structures in other countries, and to favor comparisons with other similar studies. Practical implications –The main implications for financial company managers are that, when developing a strategy aimed at strengthening IC, they should consider that human capital plays an indirect part with regard to the other components and that each investment in one of the IC subcategories should not be evaluated in isolation but in relation to its interactions. Originality/value –The article realizes a fusion between value relevance and IC literature. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that examines the relationship between VAIC™ and the market value of the Italian financial sector using an Ohlson model modified to include IC information, comprehensive of the human capital indirect effect. Post print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing) version of the article published in Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting Beyond the journal formatting, please note that there could be minor changes from this document to the final published version This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2187427). Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

A research template to evaluate the degree of accountability of integrated reporting: a case study

Purpose The scope of the study is to analyze an Italian family firm operating in the transformation and marketing of durum wheat to investigate the degree of accountability of the integrated reporting (IR) disclosed by the organization. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a case study approach proposing a specific research template to evaluate the implementation of IR depicting the role of three main dimensions: stakeholder involvement, business model and integration. Findings The paper enriches theoretical conceptualization of the implementation of IR proposing a new conceptual model that adds empirical findings to the literature on IR and at the same time addresses the call for studies of Dumay et al. (2016) to engage more with practice and development on IR. Research limitations/implications The use of a specific research framework constitutes both the main strength of the paper and also its main limit, as the dimensions of the framework have been chosen by the authors, and the observations and conclusions are based on the authors’ analysis under an interpretative approach. Practical implications The implementation of the same research framework to other organizational IR documents could allow comparisons to be expressed on the quality of the IR disclosed by different organizations and on the same organization in different periods of time. Originality/value The main originality of this paper is the creation and the employment of a specific template to analyze the degree of accountability of the case study selected representing a non-listed Italian company operating in the food industry.

Measuring intellectual capital in a firm belonging to a strategic alliance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to measure intellectual capital (IC) in firms involved in strategic alliances, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, as existing research is focused mainly on organizational level mainly and increasingly on macro-level unit such as regions or nations. There are very few works at the meso-level (i.e. alliances, clusters), and the paper aims to fill this void, by providing researchers and practitioners with a tool capable of combining measurement and management aims, developed at organizational level with the active participation of the researchers. Design/methodology/approach – The method of analysis is based on a model formalized through a fuzzy expert system (FES). The FES are able to merge the capabilities of an expert system to simulate the decision-making process with the vagueness typical of human reasoning, maintaining the ability to still have a numeric value as a response. Its construction requires the participation ...

Intellectual capital reporting in the Italian non‐profit sector: analysing a case study

Purpose - The main aim of the article is to analyze the IC reporting practices of an Italian non-profit organization (NPO), the ANPAS Piemonte, selected as it is one of the few cases with a longstanding experience in issuing IC reports. Design/methodology/approach - This is an exploratory, qualitative case study focused on a single case study organization. The study took place over eight years. The case description and analysis are based on the IC reports published by the company. Findings – This paper concludes that the ANPAS Piemonte is an organization that has expended considerable focus and effort in developing an IC measurement and reporting model. It has a well-established IC reporting procedure, but a comprehensive view of IC and of the synergies among IC subcategories is lacking. Research limitations/implications – The study focuses on a single case study of a NPO providing public interest services in Italy. The main limit therefore lies in the difficulties in generalizing the ANPAS Piemonte’s experience to other NPOs. From the IC management point of view, the distinction between different industries may be as important as the profit orientation as well as the operations of the third sector may vary across countries. Originality/value - The contribution of the articles lies in its analysis of the IC reports of an organization in the context of the NP sector, as few prior studies have examined the third sector from an ICR perspective. Post-print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing) ‘This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2187221). Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

On the plausibility of an integrated approach to disclose social and intangible issues

Purpose - – The article aims to investigate whether the integration between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and intellectual capital (IC) reports could be a plausible issue. To address this aim, the paper posits three main research questions: whether there is a theory able to explain the relationship between IC and CSR ( Design/methodology/approach - – To answer the Findings - – All the three literature reviews provide evidence that the trend to move towards an integration of social and IC issues in a single report is a plausible issue, from a theoretical, management and disclosure point of view. Research limitations/implications - – The main limit of the research lies in its theoretical nature; however, the study can provide an impulse for further research on the existing trend in the real-life context, and can also provide the theoretical basis on which to build a model that, starting from the relationships among the different kinds of voluntary reports, provides the criteria and methods to integrate the firm’s corporate voluntary reports in a single report. For researchers, this result also has an implication to control for intangibles, for example, assessing the relationship between CSR and corporate performance may explain some of the mixed findings that have occurred in the past. Practical implications - – The article inserts CSR and IC within the RBV theory. Such recognition provides managers the theoretical framework to treat them conjointly, being aware that these two dimensions are intertwined. The article also provides evidence that CSRA impact on IC creation and development. The main implication for company managers is that, when developing a strategy aimed at strengthening IC, they should consider not only all components of intellectual capital but, above all, also include CSR actions and attributes in strategy formulation. Finally, the article provides evidence of a trend towards an integration of CSR and IC reports within the Italian territory. An integrated CSR–IC approach could have relevant implications on the development of the Italian territory characterized by a large number of SMEs and networks of firms that are an integral part of the local community, whose success is often related to their capability to acquire consensus from local stakeholders such as employees, public authorities, financial organizations, banks, suppliers and citizens. Originality/value - – The article provides three main contributions: first, the paper suggests that the integration of the two different perspectives IC and CSR finds its theoretical justification in the RBV theory, which is scarcely applied to explain the link between these two perspectives; second, the article provides evidence of the real effects that investments in CSR have on the maintenance and developing of organizational IC; third, it provides evidence that there is a trend moving towards an integration of social and IC issues in a single report in the Italian context.

La value relevance incrementale dell’other comprehensive income rispetto al net income. Un’analisi sulle società quotate in Italia

L’obiettivo principale dello studio e quello di testare l’assunzione, validata da una parte della letteratura, che l’Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) items reporting sia value relevant per gli investitori in misura incrementale, ossia che fornisca loro informazioni aggiuntive rispetto al reddito netto. La rassegna della letteratura evidenzia risultati contraddittori. Gli autori ipotizzano che una delle principali cause dell’inconsistenza dei risultati dipenda dall’utilizzo di dati che si riferiscono a periodi precedenti l’introduzione degli standard contabili sul Comprehensive Income (CI). Di conseguenza, hanno testato l’ipotesi di ricerca utilizzando dati relativi a periodi successivi allo IAS 1 revised 2007, in cui e esplicitamente richiesto alle aziende di presentare le componenti in bilancio. Il campione e costituto dai gruppi quotati alla borsa valori di Milano. L’analisi di regressione fornisce evidenza della value relevance incrementale dell’OCI rispetto al reddito netto.