Investigating the current state and impact of the intellectual capital academic discipline
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-11-2012-0099 |
| Date | 21 October 2013 |
| Published date | 21 October 2013 |
| Pages | 476-500 |
| Author | Alexander Serenko,Nick Bontis |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management |
Investigating the current state
and impact of the intellectual
capital academic discipline
Alexander Serenko
Faculty of Business Administration, Lakehead University,
Thunder Bay, Canada, and
Nick Bontis
DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to: investigate the current state of intellectual capital (IC) as
an academic discipline, and explore the impact of IC on the state of practice.
Design/methodology/approach – The most influential articles published in the Journal of
Intellectual Capital were identified. Analysis of their cited and citing works was done.
Findings – The IC discipline: first, successfully disseminates its knowledge beyond the English-
language world but ignores research published in languages other than English; second, has higher
self-citation rates; third, uses books for the development of its theoretical foundation; fou rth,
successfully converts experiential knowledge into academic knowledge; fifth, exerts a limited yet
potentially increasing practical impact; and sixth, is at the theoretical consolidation stage of pre-
science and is progressing toward becoming a reference discipline. No anomalies in the development of
the IC discipline were observed.
Practical implications – IC researchers should pay more attention to works published in non-
English journals. Given the status of IC as a professional discipline, they should continue using non-
peer reviewed sources to convert experiential knowledge into academic knowledge. They also need to
promote their research far beyond the traditional IC domain.
Originality/value – Tothe best knowledge of the autho rs, this is the first empirical analysis of the IC
discipline from the reference discipline perspective.
Keywords Intellectual capital, Sciences, Classification
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Intellectual capital (IC) is a relatively young management discipline, albeit with a shor t
yet glorious history (Sullivan, 2000; Pike et al., 2006; Polo, 2007). It is based on the
works of many visionaries who identified basic IC principles, ideas, and concepts,
which facilitated the introduction and practical application of IC tools in the 1990s.
Initially, IC was mostly driven by practitioners who not only launched various
IC projects around the world, but also contributed to the establishment of the IC
knowledge base by publishing books, writing academic articles, and speaking at
academic events. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, IC was officially
recognized as a scientific discipline within the management domain.
Every scientific discipline has two primary objectives. The first is to create the body
of theoretical knowledge to explain various phenomena and document this knowledge
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1469-1930.htm
Received 3 November 2012
Revised 19 February 2013
Accepted 25 February 2013
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 14 No. 4, 2013
pp. 476-500
rEmeraldGroup PublishingLimited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-11-2012-0099
This study is kindly supported by the research grant 864-07-0181 from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The authors are grateful to Madora
Moshonsky for her assistance with data analysis.
476
JIC
14,4
in credible sources, such as peer-reviewed jour nals, books, and conference proceedings.
The second purpose is to contribute to the state of practice, translate academic findings
into actionable items, and improve the quality of life. Unfortunately, the latter objective
is often overlooked because most academics only search for the recognition of their
scholarly contribution among their academic pe ers (Blackmore and K andiko, 2011).
Nevertheless, the level of national economic wealth at least partially depends on the
country’s scientific output and research impact (Rousseau and Rousseau, 1998; King,
2004). It is for this reason the topic of national IC has attracted global attention (Bontis,
2004; Pawlowsky, 2011).
When a new discipline appears, it usually lacks a clear direction, exhibits
disagreements within the research community (Kuhn, 1962), borrows knowledge
from other academic fields (Wade et al., 2006), and has limited practical impact.
Sometimes, management concepts and research trends turn into scientific fads
and quickly vanish. A scientific fad (Abrahamson, 2009), also referred to as a
management fad or management fashion (Abrahamson, 1991; Abrahamson and
Fairchild, 1999), emerges when a new line of research attracts the attention of the
scientific community, becomes dominant, exhibits exponential growth of respective
publications, but suddenly collapses because it fails to substantially inform theo ry
and contribute to practice (Starbuck, 2009). Since its establishment, IC has enjoyed
continuous, steady growth in the volume of academic publications (Serenko and
Bontis, 2004; Grant, 2011). Whereas many studies documented the history of IC as
an academic discipline and elaborated on its possible future development
(Edvinsson, 2010, 2011, 2013), only a few empirically explored its current state,
overall direction, and theoretical or practical impact.
Previously, Petty and Guthrie (2000) analyzed the research literature and identified
the key stages of the progression of the IC discipline. Guthrie et al. (2012) extended this
study to recognize research trends and draw attention to several gaps in IC research.
Dumay and Garanina (2013) critically reviewed IC research and recommended IC
scholars to break free from the dominating acc ounting paradigm. Rodrı
´guez-Ruiz and
Fern a
´ndez-Mene
´ndez (2009) analyzed the citation patter ns of IC journal articles an d
concluded that IC is not a scientific fad; it is a collection of evolving ideas in search for
its scientific paradigm. Serenko et al. (2009) conducted a scientometric analysis of the
proceedings of the McMaster World Congress on the Management of Intellectual
Capital and Innovation for the 1996-2008 period to describe several characteristics of IC
development. More empirical research, however, is needed to further understand IC as
an academic discipline. To ensure the progress of any scientific field, it is cr ucial to
periodically pause and understand where we were, where we are, and where we want
to be as a discipline (Holsapple,2008; Hassan, 2011). This study attemptsto fill that void.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. The following section (i.e. Section 2)
discusses the evolution of IC and proposes this study’s research questions. Section 3
outlines the methodology, and Section 4 presents the results. The last section elaborates
on the findings, offers several implications, identifies research limitations, and
proposes avenues for future research.
2. IC as a field of science
2.1 IC origin
Understanding the state of pl ay is a logical first step in str ategically orienting
the [IC] discipline and establishing paths for future progress (Petty and Guthrie, 2000,
p. 156).
477
Intellectual
capital academic
discipline
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