The Intellectual Capital and journalists' Performance

In the age of knowledge-based economy, intellectual capital (IC) is of growing and substantial importance more so than the tangible assets such as land and financial capital. IC includes human capital, organizational capital and social capital. IC has become a driving force for an organization to stay competitive. Journalists are vital human capital in a news organization. They are the knowledge workers who need both independence (autonomy) and interdependence (teamwork) in order to accumulate and share knowledge. In addition to playing the role as “gate-keepers” in the information delivery process, part of a journalist’s job is to develop relationships with news sources from outside of the organization. Therefore, journalists are also the social capital in their organization. A news organization loses both human and social capital whenever a journalist resigns or job-hops. The purpose of this research is to examine relationships between IC and journalists’ performance in the media. We argue that journalists embody both human and social capitals which are mediated by job autonomy which journalists need in order to achieve high individual job performance. We also argue that organizational capital is mediated by team-level task interdependence which also leads to better individual job performance.