Understanding the impact of intellectual capital on entrepreneurship: a literature review
| Pages | 528-559 |
| Published date | 18 August 2020 |
| Date | 18 August 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-02-2020-0054 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Antonio Crupi,Fabrizio Cesaroni,Alberto Di Minin |
Understanding the impact of
intellectual capital on
entrepreneurship:
a literature review
Antonio Crupi
Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies,
Institute of Management and Department EMbeDS, Pisa, Italy
Fabrizio Cesaroni
Universita degli Studi di Messina, Messina, Italy, and
Alberto Di Minin
Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies,
Institute of Management and Department EMbeDS, Pisa, Italy
Abstract
Purpose –The present paper aims to explore and map the development of the intellectual capital (IC)-related
studies by answering the following research questions: (1) what are the theoretical pillars on which prior
literature focusing on the IC–entrepreneurship relationship has grown and expanded?; (2) what are the main
research areas covered by past literature focused on the IC–entrepreneurship relationship?; (3) which areas of
research should be explored in the future?
Design/methodology/approach –The study relied on the co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling
techniques to investigate a complete data set of IC–entrepreneurship publications.
Findings –Findings indicated that scholars’attention had increased, starting from the beginningof the 2000s
due to the widespread recognition of the importance of knowledge for firms’competitive advantage. Results of
the co-citation clustering analysis have identified five main theoretical building blocks of the IC–
entrepreneurship literature, which addressed both the basics of IC foundations and more specific aspects
related to IC (family firms and the measurement of IC). Results of the bibliographic coupling analysis indicated
that future studies should consider the existence of interactionsand synergies among the different components
of IC. Furthermore, attention should be devoted to the management practices of IC.
Originality/value –The present study represents the contributions offered by IC to studies about
entrepreneurship strategies. Building on findings emerging from a qualitative content analysis on clustered
prior publications, the authors discuss a research agenda that is expected to inspire future studies to continue
the exploration of the crucial characteristics of IC in contributing to entrepreneurial and managerial studies.
Keywords Intellectual capital, Human capital, Social capital, Entrepreneurship, Co-citation analysis,
Bibliographic coupling
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
The growing relevance of intellectual capital (IC) has attracted the attention of management
scholars, who have increasingly studied what drives firms’IC, how firms can manage and
deploy their IC and which consequences can be expected from its exploitation (Brooking,
1998;Edvinsson and Malone, 2007;Petty and Guthrie, 2000;Stewart and Ruckdeschel, 1998;
Sullivan, 2000). Different models and often contrasting interpretations have been proposed in
this respect.
The expressed contradictions in the definition of IC and the process of gradual
convergence have been frequently addressed by prior literature reviews that focused on the
problem of identifying IC’s main components, the relationships among them and the impact
they have on various aspects of firms’activity and performance (Buenechea-Elberdin, 2017;
JIC
22,3
528
Received 28 February 2020
Revised 6 June 2020
8 June 2020
20 July 2020
Accepted 3 August 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 22 No. 3, 2021
pp. 528-559
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-02-2020-0054
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1469-1930.htm
Dumay et al., 2015;Ferenhof et al., 2015;Manzari et al., 2012;Pedro et al., 2018). Contrary to
those literature reviews, this study offers a complementary interpretation of the relationship
between the concept and theory of IC and that of entrepreneurship, by analyzing the
theoretical foundations of such a relationship and the main lines of research arising from it. In
fact, the importance of IC to the field of research on entrepreneurship has experienced
significant growth in the last decades due to several reasons. First, being IC a source of
sustainable competitive advantage for firms, its impact on the success and survival of new
entrepreneurial initiatives has been investigated by emphasizing the relevance of IC on new
employment generation and economic growth (Hormiga et al., 2011). Second, strategic
management studies have stressed the decisive role of knowledge assets and the way in
which such assets are exploited. In dynamic competitive environments, the exploitation of
knowledge assets requires firms to possess proper dynamic capabilities (Teece et al., 1997),
which “are more likely to be resident in firms that are highly entrepreneurial, with flat
hierarchies, a clear vision, high-powered incentives, and high autonomy (to ensure
responsiveness)”(Teece, 2000, p. 8). The analysis of the IC–entrepreneurship relationship
has thus become important not only for new vent ures but also a determinant of
competitiveness for established firms to achieve good performance in the long-term (Teece,
2000). Third, it has become evident that IC represents a potential source of technological
development by facilitating entrepreneurial activities in high-technology sectors and by
reducing risks and increasing potential returns from investments in innovation
(Hayton, 2005).
Based on such considerations about the relationship between IC and entrepreneurship,
this study addresses the following research questions: (1) what are the theoretical pillars on
which prior literature focusing on the IC–entrepreneurship relationship has grown and
expanded?; (2) what are the main research areas covered by past literature focused on the IC–
entrepreneurship relationship?; (3) which areas of research should be covered in the future?
To address such research questions, we conducted a quantitative bibliometric analysis of
3,648 peer-reviewed articles, using co -citation and bibliographic coupli ng clustering
techniques. To the best of our knowledge, extensive quantitative analyses related to
publications about the contribution of IC on entrepreneurship are lacking. The present study
aims at filling this gap and at becoming a trigger for future analyses and for further
developments in the field. By employing a quantitative approach, the literature review
performed in this study allowed to disclose existing scientific roots of the IC–
entrepreneurship literature and to spot the current thematic trends and emerging
trajectories in the field. Furthermore, by running a qualitative content analysis, based on
selected articles, this study identified and discussed relevant research trajectories for the
future.
The results of the co-citation analysis revealed that the contribution of the IC in the
entrepreneurship literature is based on five thematic clusters divided as follows: (1) social
capital and its impact on entrepreneurship, (2) human capital as a strategic resource, (3)
measuring IC, (4) the interplay between IC and firms’innovative capabilities and (5)
organizational social capital in family firms. Then, results of the bibliographic coupling
analysis identified five current and emerging thematic clusters divided as follows: (1) the
effect of human and social capitals on survival and performance of new ventures, (2)
managerial aspects of human capital, (3) IC as a strategic resource, (4) the impact of social
capital on organizations’performance and (5) human and social capitals in corporate
governance.
In turn, by analyzing such thematic clusters, the contribution that this study offers to the
IC-related literature is twofold. On the one hand, the study displays the development of IC as a
complicated matter by delving into its foundations with updated thematic topics and
emerging trends. The present research study merges the insights generated by IC and
IC and
entrepreneurship
529
entrepreneurial scholars in the past years, offering a detailed framework of this research field.
On the other hand, by implementing a content analysis of the selected thematic areas, this
study identifies intertwined and cross-domain research trajectories triggering future studies
and research questions.
The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we introduce the concept of IC and
its main components. In Section 3, we clarify the research strategy and methods used for the
empirical analysis. In Section 4, we display the principal results of the co-citation and
bibliographic coupling analyses. In Section 5, we examine emerging trends and trajectories
by discussing the crucial implications for academics and policymakers and by considering
future research developments. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper.
2. Theoretical background: intellectual capital
The last three decades have experienced an impressive proliferation of studies aboutIC. Since
the early 1990s, a cross-domain scholars’community has attempted to conceptualize IC by
intertwining its definition in their respective fields of study (Keong Choong, 2008). The
extensive collection of publications across disciplines has addressed the notion of IC from
different perspectives by gradually extending its original meaning to include a wide variety
of features and additional properties. Prior literature also flourished with a plethora of terms
to describe either similar or different conceptual elements related to IC. Early definitions
focused on tangible aspects of capital and defined IC as a set of market, human and
infrastructure assets (Brooking, 1998). Lately, however, scholars started to explore its
immaterial side (in terms of knowledge, information, intellectual property, know-how and
skills) by emphasizing especially the pivotal role of the knowledge dimension and its impact
on wealth creation (Stewart and Ruckdeschel, 1998). In turn, IC has been defined as
companies’knowledge-based equity (Brennan and Connell, 2000) or knowledge convertible
into profit (Harrison and Sullivan, 2000;Sullivan, 2000).
Prior literature has also highlighted the crucial importance of the relationship between IC
and firms’competitive advantage and survival. The theoretical bases to address this
relationship have been twofold. On the one side, the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has
shown that firms’competitive advantage is influenced by the availability of resources that
are valuable, rare, inimitable and exploited within the organization (Barney, 1991). Managers
must then supervise such internal resources to guarantee a sustainable competitive
advantage. IC, in general, and HC, in particular, represent resources with such characteristics,
and, as a consequence, they play a key role in determining the firm’s ability to gain a
competitive advantage (Chahal and Bakshi, 2015). On the other hand, knowledge-based
theory (Grant, 1996) lists the firm’s knowledge bases and the firm’s capacity to create and use
knowledge as main determinants of competitive advantage, which may also originate from
external organizations. In turn, the blend of various knowledge bases conveys to the
organization a better competitive position (Kamukama, 2013). As knowledge represents the
main essence of IC (Harrison and Sullivan, 2000;Sullivan, 2000), the latter becomes a key
determinant of firms’competitive advantage. Furthermore, as long as IC is renewed
according to the evolution of external conditions, such a competitive advantage may be
sustained over time, as dynamic capability theory suggests (Barney, 1991;Teece et al., 1997).
In terms of components of IC, prior scholars converged on the idea that IC is not a
unidimensional concept but it lays different levels (individual, organizational and network
levels). In this sense, IC is not only restricted to the knowledge possessed by individuals but it
also embraces knowledge collected within organizational databases, business processes,
systems and connections (Youndt et al., 2004). Within this vein, a common theoretical
framework has been gradually emerging which considers IC as a theoretical construct made
of three main components (Edvinsson and Malone, 2007;Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998):
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