Journal of Intellectual Capital: a review of emerging themes and future trends
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-10-2019-0239 |
| Published date | 18 July 2020 |
| Date | 18 July 2020 |
| Pages | 744-767 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & Finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Marco Bellucci,Giacomo Marzi,Beatrice Orlando,Francesco Ciampi |
Journal of Intellectual Capital:
a review of emerging themes and
future trends
Marco Bellucci
University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Giacomo Marzi
Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK
Beatrice Orlando
University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy, and
Francesco Ciampi
University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Abstract
Purpose –This article aims to provide a bibliometric and systematic literature analysis of studies published in
the Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) from 2014 to 2018 in order to highlight emerging themes and future
trends.
Design/methodology/approach –The analysisfocused on 187 papers published on JIC over a period of five
years. A scientometric approach to data mining enabled the detection of patterns in the dataset. Precisely, the
investigation was conducted by integrating a bibliometric analysis on VOSviewer with a systematic literature
review.
Findings –Four main streams of research on JIC emerged in the years of the analysis: reporting and disclosure
of intellectual capital; intellectual capital research in universities, education and public sector; knowledge
management; intellectual capital, financial performance, and market value.
Research limitations/implications –The study offers valid insights to the topics covered by the Journal of
Intellectual Capital by identifying the main research gaps and trends, along with future research avenues.
Originality/value –Prior scholars mostly focused on systematic literature reviews, whilst the use of
bibliometric methods generally seems to be a missing tile in the research domain. Also, none of the extant
studies has focused on the Journal of Intellectual Capital with reference to the 2014–2018 period. The use of both
bibliometric and systematic approaches to literature review delivered extremely fine-tuned results in terms of
factors such as citations, contents and evolution of clusters over time.
Keywords Intellectual capital, Systematic literature review, Bibliometric analysis, Bibliographic coupling,
VOSviewer, Intellectual capital reporting, Knowledge management
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
This study aims to review the articles appeared on the Journal of Intellectual Capital in the
last five years, as a mean to draw a pattern of past and future avenues of development of
this well-recognized outlet. Considering the importance of the Journal in the research
panorama and for intellectual capital (IC) research in particular, our hope is that the
outcome of our study will be useful for both IC scholars, who seek to find and explore gaps
in the research domain, and for those practitioners, who wish to improve their knowledge of
the topic.
Since the intellectual capital concept was introduced by Galbraith (1969), scholars
emphasized its centrality for firm’s survival and growth, performance, competitiveness and
innovativeness (Porter and Millar, 1985;Kogut and Zander, 1996;Davenport, 1999). Despite
the abundance of attention on the topic over time, the notion and the influence of IC still
remain either oblique or elusive (Bontis, 1998;Swart, 2006;Mariano and Walter, 2015). As a
JIC
22,4
744
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 14 October 2019
Revised 15 January 2020
13 March 2020
7 May 2020
Accepted 18 May 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 22 No. 4, 2021
pp. 744-767
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-10-2019-0239
matter of fact, IC proved itself to be a very versatile, dynamic and contemporary concept,
capable to raise an increasing scholar interest year by year and to renew itself. This fashion
was well-reflected by publications appearing in the JIC in the studied time range.
IC is the critical capacity of managing knowledge-based intellect through detangling the
meaning of symbols (Reich, 1991), while it is strongly tied to the idea of the learning
organization (Argyris, 1992,Bontis, 1998). This construct refers to that combination of
knowledge and experiences which leverage firm wealth (Andriessen, 2004). Thereby, IC
springs from the process of knowledge creation of firms thriving to compete based on
continuous improvement (Senge, 1990).
IC is an intangible component, a form of tacit knowledge, which contributes the most in the
process of firms wealth creation (Nelson and Winter, 1982;Youndt et al., 2004) and that can be
further specified into five sub-dimensions: the human capital, the structural capital, the
organizational capital, the process capital, and the customer, relational or social capital (Wiig,
1997;van Dijk et al., 2016). The large success and the importance of the topic are also
sustained by the wealth of the existing literature reviews (Petty and Guthrie, 2000;Serenko
and Bontis, 2004;Serenko et al., 2010;Pedro et al., 2018;V
at
am
anescu et al., 2016).
The Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) is the cornerstone of IC studies, the leading
publications outlet that reflects the notable recent evolution of the research field (Serenko
and Bontis, 2004;Serenko et al., 2010). To date there is no literature review exclusively
dedicated to the Journal of Intellectual Capital for the period from 2014 onwards.
Furthermore, in the past few months, JIC encountered a series of changes in the editorial
board, with a new Editor-in-Chief, new members and a renovated mission for the journal.
This resounding gap motivated current bibliometric and systematic literature analysis of
publications appeared on JIC (Heck and Bremser, 1986;Sullivan, 1999;Zinkhan and Leigh,
1999) from 2014 to 2018.
The methodology was explicitly designed to provide answers to hot questions such as:
how publications in the Journal of Intellectual Capital evolved considering a change in the
management of the Journal? What are the relevant themes and future trends in the field of IC
as they emerge by publications in the journal? What are the main streams of research
currently existing and how they are they characterized?
To achieve aforementioned goals, we integrated two different methods of analysis,
bibliometric an d systematic review methods. T hesample includes the entire population of
the 187 papers published on JIC from 2014 to 2018. In addition, the interpretation of results
was fine-tuned, thanks to the interview with the new Editor-in-Chief, Professor Merrill
Warkentin.
The results show that JIC publications mostly gravitates around four different streams of
research, grouped by theme and consistency. The evolution of the clusters let emerge the shift
of the attention of researchers and a change in the relevance of different topics over-time, thus
providing extremely valuable insights on future research frontiers and pathways of the
Journal.
For the remainder, the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 explains the research
method. The interview with the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Intellectual Capital, Professor
Merrill Warkentin, is reported in Section 3.Section 4 is dedicated to a comprehensive analysis
of the Journal’s articles for the period 2014 to 2018. Section 5 provides our conclusions.
2. Methods
2.1 Methodological notes about the interview process
For the longest time scholars in social sciences have used the practice of interviewing experts
as a mean for exploring a phenomenon and gaining precious insights. Moreover, as any
entrepreneurial or managerial activity, leading a journal intrinsically implies that the
JIC: a review
and future
trends
745
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