Reflections on JIC’s twenty-year history and suggestions for future IC research
| Published date | 30 June 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-03-2020-0082 |
| Date | 30 June 2020 |
| Pages | 439-457 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & Finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Carol Y.Y. Lin,Leif Edvinsson |
Reflections on JIC’s twenty-year
history and suggestions for future
IC research
Carol Y.Y. Lin
Department of Business Administration, National Chengchi University,
Taipei City, Taiwan, and
Leif Edvinsson
Universal Networking Intellectual Capital, Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose–The threefold purpose of this paper is to reflect on the evolution and transformation of the Journal of
Intellectual Capital (JIC) over the past 20 years, to project its future research directions, and, finally, to propose
an IC ecosystem.
Design/methodology/approach –We adopted a combination of a narrative and a systematic review of 700
JIC papers appearing in the journal in its entirety, from Volume 1 (2000) to Volume 20 (2019). The categorization
of topics is based on the frequency of keywords in the titles of the papers.
Findings –Scholars have proposed four stages of intellectual capital (IC) research: definition/awareness,
measurement/management, implementation/strategy, and ecosystem. Over the past 20 years, a total of 16
special issues were published in the journal. The five topics with the highest paper counts in descending order
are country-specific studies, concept papers, reporting and disclosure, measurement and performance. Four
issues require the researcher’s special attention: theoretical development, IC research methodology, national
intellectual capital, and data collection. An IC ecosystem is proposed to invite discussion and refinement. For
future research, ecosystem-oriented and interdisciplinary research are suggested. Research design aimed at
achieving Sustainable Development Goals are encouraged.
Research limitations/implications –Intellectual capital research has implications for four major types of
stakeholders, namely academia, government agencies, practitioners, and top management team of
organizations. The major limitation of this research is that this review of twenty years of intellectual capital
research is limited exclusively to the papers published in the JIC; IC papers published in relevant journals or
conferences were not included.
Originality/value –This paper presents a comprehensive review of the articles published in the first 20
volumes of the JIC. The field of intellectual capital has evolved from the social construction of IC knowledge to
IC knowledge diffusion and inheritance. Hopefully, a fully developed IC ecosystem will eventually emerge. IC
researchers can position themselves in the IC research continuum and devise distinctive pathways to enhance
their contributions to the transformation of IC research.
Keywords Intellectual capital, Future research, Paper review, Transdisciplinary, Ecosystem
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The first volume of the Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) was published in 2000. Today the
JIC has become the most important academic journal devoted to intellectual capital (IC), with a
high impact factor of 3.744. Over the past 20 years, we have witnessed its development,
transformation, and growing contribution to investigating and promoting the intangibles.
Over the past few decades, competition and competitiveness have been increasingly
emphasized by organizations. They have employed various management measures to win
over competitors and have strived for profit maximization and market share. Win-lose was
the dominant logic in the industrial age, as companies competed for limited resources. In the
present sharing economy, both tangibles (cars–Uber, houses–Airbnb) and intangibles
Reflections on
JIC’s twenty-
year history
439
Acknowledgment: The first author would like to thank Prof. Leif Edvinsson for encouraging me to write
up this reflection paper.
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 9 March 2020
Revised 12 May 2020
Accepted 11 June 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 22 No. 3, 2021
pp. 439-457
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-03-2020-0082
(knowledge) can be shared. Sharing intangibles does not entail the depletion of resources over
time; rather, they may be enhanced by the exchange of knowledge. By publishing IC-related
research, the JIC serves the purpose of guiding organizations and practitioners to come to
appreciate the real essence of intangibles. In other words, the JIC is an effective medium for
organizations to embrace and capitalize on the value of IC.
The transformation from an industrial economy to a service economy has been based on
intangibles, service interaction and renewal rather than hard assets (Nahapiet and Ghoshal,
1998;Lev, 2001;Edvinsson, 2013;Stahle et al., 2015). Furthermore, the development of
information technology and robot technology has increased the probability that the features
of everyday life will be increasingly controlled by computerized systems. What remains
distinctively human are emotions, feelings and intangibles.
In addition to providing a summary of past research and a projection of future IC scholarly
endeavors, this paper also proposes an IC ecosystem. Particularly, we discovered the birth of
a new research stream (IC) through the social construction of knowledge by a community of
IC scholars. It reached a mature stage through knowledge diffusion and knowledge
inheritance. Hopefully, an IC ecosystem will be established in the future. Through this
reflective paper, IC scholars can find a suitable and distinctive position in this research field
and develop a future research path as a means of enhancing their contributions.
Review
Over the past 20 years, we have witnessed the growth of the intellectual capital community,
which is comprised of academia, practitioners, government officials and professionals.
Currently, three conferences have had a particular focus on intellectual capital for the past
ten years, as is the case for two knowledge management conferences, and two workshops (one
each in Europe and Japan), which have drawn an increasingly large number of IC participants.
(1) The 17th International Conference on Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management
and Organizational Learning (ICICKM 2020)
(2) The 16th World Conference on Intellectual Capital for Communities (IC16 2020)
(3) The 15th International Forum on Knowledge Asset Dynamics (IFKAD 2020)
(4) ICLIC 2020: The 14th International Conference on Learning and Intellectual Capital
(5) The 20th European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM 2019)
(6) The 15th European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM 2019)
(7) The 7th WICI Japan Awards for Excellence in Integrated Reporting (WICI 2019)
Generally speaking, conferences and workshops serve as incubators for journal papers. The
JIC and the above-mentioned conferences and workshops have been mutually reinforcing, as
evidenced by the increasing number of articles indicated in Figure 1. To determine the growth
pattern of research and the growing trend of IC development, we conducted a brief review of
the tables of contents of the entire 20 volumes of the JIC, from Volume 1 (2000) to Volume
20 (2019).
Figure 1 displays the number of articles appearing in each volume for the past 20 years,
which also includes interviews of IC thought leaders, such as Hubert Saint-Onge, Jim Botkin,
Sharon L. Oriel, Jonathan Low, Goran Roos and Derek Binney. The number of published
papers shows an increase starting from Volume 4 in 2003; the first peak occurs in 2007–2008
when the financial system collapsed, most likely an indication of the importance of
intangibles. The downward trend from 2010 may be due to the emergence of divergent paper
outlets stemming from the spreading awareness of the importance of intangibles, such as
JIC
22,3
440
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