Framing intellectual capital for elite athletes
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-05-2021-0126 |
| Published date | 21 February 2022 |
| Date | 21 February 2022 |
| Pages | 1-17 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Roberto Aprile,Mario Nicoliello,Susanne Durst |
Framing intellectual capital for
elite athletes
Roberto Aprile
Department of Management, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy
Mario Nicoliello
Economics, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy, and
Susanne Durst
Business Administration, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia and
School of Business, Innovation and Sustainability, Halmstad University, Halmstad,
Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –This conceptual paper proposes an intellectual capital (IC) framework dedicated to elite athletes
(EA) to demonstrate the usefulness of IC on individual persons. Thus, it connects EA with the concept of IC.
Design/methodology/approach –The paper is inspired by the classical IC dimensions (human capital,
structural capital and relational capital), which are used to develop the IC framework for EA. An exemplary
case study is used to validate the framework.
Findings –It is argued that there is a need to adapt the traditional ICframework for EA. Therefore, this paper
proposes a specific IC framework consisting of natural capital, sports capital and media capital.
Research limitations/implications –This paper deals with EA and the sports industry, but should be
extended to other sectors where aspects such as image and celebrity represent significant intangible resources.
Practical implications –The proposed IC framework can help EA and their managers to better understand
how IC value is created.
Originality/value –This paper extends the IC concept to other fields of application, i.e. EA, and thus
individual persons.
Keywords Intellectual capital framework, Natural capital, Sports capital, Media capital, Elite athletes, Sport
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
The business of sports has become a big business. Elite athletes (EA in the remainder of the
paper) can earn enormous incomes through the practice of their sports, other contracts, and
the successful marketing of their image rights and presence in social and mass media.
Simultaneously, many of these athletes have become social influencers in fashion, social
behaviors and even political viewpoints (Su et al., 2020).
The sports sector, particularly professional sports, has a high level of intangible assets
(Wicker et al., 2012); reputation, image, the level of innovation and not to forget the athletes
themselves can be mentioned in this context. While in the past these elements resided
primarily with the sports companies, they are now also related to EA who have become
billionaire celebrities, which in turn made athletes the main assets of sports companies or
clubs (Puspitasari et al., 2019).
A study by Pedro et al. (2018) has shown that extant research on intellectual capital (IC)
tends to focus on organizations and has only recently been extended to the IC of nations and
Elite athletes
1
© Roberto Aprile, Mario Nicoliello and Susanne Durst. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This
article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1469-1930.htm
Received 6 May 2021
Revised 16 September 2021
Accepted 11 November 2021
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 23 No. 7, 2022
pp. 1-17
Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-05-2021-0126
regions. The same research also mentions that the sports industry has not yet been an object
of analysis, despite its increasing relevance. One of the few examples is the paper by Vitolla
et al. (2021) that focuses on IC disclosure practices of top football clubs or the one by Leit~
ao
and Baptista (2019) that addresses the IC and brand value of English football clubs.
Similar can be observed at the individual level. The role of IC in conjunction with
individual EA is underdeveloped. Extant research has focused on athletes as brands (Arai
et al., 2014), and how to manage these brands (Gladden and Funk, 2001;Na et al., 2020). There
is also research that addressed athletes for product or brand endorsement (Carrillat et al.,
2014), their impact on endorsed brands (Sato et al., 2019) or how accounting is treating them
(Puspitasari et al., 2019). Although this appears promising, this research is recent and appears
rather fragmented. Hence, it indicates a rather limited focus on IC and thus understanding
even if it is well known that EA such as Ronaldo or Hamiltoncan generate enormous incomes
through their contracts or successes in sport and by exploiting their images. This stresses the
need for more research to broaden the boundaries of IC research. The present research
extends the scope of analysis to EA; an aspect that, to our knowledge, has not been addressed
in the extant IC literature yet (relating to IC frameworks in particular). Our study executes a
micro level of analysis, i.e. it focuses on the IC found with EA.
We define EA as professional sportsmen and sportswomen who can generate relevant
earnings not only by taking advantage of their specific human capital (HC), their specific
skills and competencies in their respective sport but even by exploiting additional IC values
such as their images.
The overall aim of this paper is to advance current IC research and its areas of application
by presenting a conceptual paper that attempts to conceptualize an IC framework applied to
EA. To develop this framework, we rely on the three traditional IC components, i.e. HC, SC
and relational capital (RC) (Bontis, 1998;Edvinsson and Malone, 1997), and the specific
setting found with EA. The framework is the outcome of a theoretical analysis of the
suitability of the traditional IC components in the context of EA. Given the specific features of
EA that are not found with ordinary athletes, our analysis concludes that it is necessary to
propose new components to address this situation. To validate the developed framework
Usain Bolt is used as an exemplary case. This is justified by the fact that Bolt is an athlete who
has recently ended his career that offers the opportunity to study his entire sporting career.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. The next section briefly summarizes
existing research on IC frameworks to demonstrate not only the relevance of the present
study but also its positioning within existing research. Section 3 discusses the most relevant
characteristics of EA and thus sets the frame for the development of a specific IC framework.
The sports sector is briefly covered in this section too. Section 4 analyses the suitability of
applying the traditional IC framework with EA and, based on that we propose a new IC
framework. Section 5 analyses the case study of Bolt to validate the proposed framework, and
Section 6 ends with the conclusions.
2. Theoretical background
As mentioned,this paper is grounded in the traditionalIC components. It follows Guthrie et al.
(2012, p. 70) who notedthat the commonly accepted terminologyof IC which is the outcome of
past research activities and that “have contributed to determining an almost universally
acceptedtheoretical frameworkthat divides IC intothree elements relatedto human, structural/
organizational,and relational/social capitaldimensions”. It is also in line with Warkentin et al.
(2021)recent Guest Editorial in this Journalwhere they wrote that “IC compriseshuman capital
(of employees), organizational (orcollective) capital and relationship capital”(p. 433).
While the dimensions may be labeled differently in the existing literature, they refer to HC
(the knowledge embedded in people), SC (the knowledge embedded in organizations and their
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