2008 Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2008), "2008 Awards for Excellence", The Learning Organization, Vol. 15 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/tlo.2008.11915faa.002

2008 Awards for Excellence

Article Type: 2008 Awards for Excellence From: The Learning Organization, Volume 15, Issue 6

The following article was selected for this year's Outstanding Paper Award for The Learning Organization: An International Journal

``Intellectual capital and corporate performance in knowledge-intensive SMEs''

Sandra Cohen and Nikolaos KaimenakisDepartment of Accounting and Finance, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece

Purpose - In recent years a significant number of intellectual capital (IC) metrics have been developed and applied in many organizations. However, there is still a strong need to specify the relations among the different categories of intellectual assets that exist in the context of small to medium-sized enterprises (SME), and to determine the way these assets affect financial performance. This paper has a dual scope; first, to specify these relations, and, second, to explore the impact of IC on corporate performance.

Design/methodology/approach - Hypotheses are tested through a survey conducted on Greek knowledge-intensive SMEs of the service sector. Firms' perceptions regarding intellectual capital categories, which were measured through the answers given on a structured questionnaire, and accounting data gathered from financial databases were combined.

Findings - The findings indicate that the interaction of certain categories of intellectual assets in SMEs is in some aspects different from the pattern evidenced in other surveys that analyze large companies. Also, the empirical data provide supportive evidence that certain categories of intellectual capital positively contribute to corporate performance.

Originality/value - The paper succeeds in specifying the relations among the different categories of intellectual assets in the context of SMEs and in exploring the impact of IC on corporate performance.

Keywords Business performance, Greece, Human capital, Intellectual capital, Knowledge organizations, Small to medium-sized enterprises

www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/09696470710739417

This article originally appeared in Volume 14 Number 3, 2007, pp. 241-62, The Learning Organization: An International Journal