Intellectual capital - defining key performance indicators for organizational knowledge assets

Measuring intellectual capital is on the agenda of most 21st century organisations. This paper takes a knowledge-based view of the firm and discusses the importance of measuring organizational knowledge assets. Knowledge assets underpin capabilities and core competencies of any organisation. Therefore, they play a key strategic role and need to be measured. This paper reviews the existing approaches for measuring knowledge based assets and then introduces the knowledge asset map which integrates existing approaches in order to achieve comprehensiveness. The paper then introduces the knowledge asset dashboard to clarify the important actor/infrastructure relationship, which elucidates the dynamic nature of these assets. Finally, the paper suggests to visualise the value pathways of knowledge assets before designing strategic key performance indicators which can then be used to test the assumed causal relationships. This will enable organisations to manage and report these key value drivers in today’s economy. Introduction In the last decade management literature has paid significant attention to the role of knowledge for global competitiveness in the 21st century. It is recognised as a durable and more sustainable strategic resource to acquire and maintain competitive advantages (Barney, 1991a; Drucker, 1988; Grant, 1991a). Today’s business world is characterised by phenomena such as e-business, globalisation, higher degrees of competitiveness, fast evolution of new technology, rapidly changing client demands, as well as changing economic and political structures. In this new context companies need to develop clearly defined strategies that will give them a competitive advantage (Porter, 2001; Barney, 1991a). For this, organisations have to understand which capabilities they need in order to gain and maintain this competitive advantage (Barney, 1991a; Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). Organizational capabilities are based on knowledge. Thus, knowledge is a resource that forms the foundation of the company’s capabilities. Capabilities combine to The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/1463-7154.htm The authors would like to thank, Göran Roos, Steven Pike, Oliver Gupta, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which helped us to improve this paper. Intellectual capital