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The phenomenon of intellectual capital in the firm has been deeply researched and immensely debated in the management literature in recent years. After three decades of evolution, it has become established as a mature field of research. At this point, a review of its theoretical foundations and current and future evolution provides us with the state of the art of intellectual capital in the firm. The purpose of this paper is to present a quantitative review of the existing literature on intellectual capital in the firm.

In this paper, the authors present a quantitative review of the existing literature on intellectual capital in the firm. To do so, the authors searched the JCR-SSCI database from 1990 to 2016 and identified 553 citing documents; these were split into three main periods in order to identify the interactions and path dependencies existing between different foundations of research. In addition, areas of current and future research connected with the theoretical foundations were identified. For these purposes, the authors used both co-citation analyses as well as bibliographical coupling.

In this paper, three main stages of IC evolution have been identified with the main topics and research frames, as well as their path dependencies. Additionally, four main areas of current and future development of IC have been identified: IC measurement, IC in new business models, IC disclosure, and its role in social capital and human resource practices.

The present bibliometric study is a quantitative review of papers published in the Web of Science database.

By its dimensions ‒ broad academic disciplines and longitudinal character ‒ this bibliometric study constitutes a new quantitative review of the IC discipline, both drawing its intellectual evolution in the last decades, and showing current and future research trends in IC and the firm.

This study aims to analyze the moderating role of debt financing in the relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and small and medium enterprise (SME) performance in high-tech and low-tech industries.

This longitudinal study uses a balanced panel sample of 7,293 (3,563 high-tech and 3,730 low-tech) SMEs in Southwestern European countries from 2013 to 2020. The data are analyzed using a fixed-effect model as baseline estimation, and a generalized method of moments estimation is used for robustness checks.

The results show strong positive effects of human capital (HC) and structural capital (SC) and a weak effect of capital employed (CE), on the performance of high-tech SMEs. Debt financing is negatively and significantly associated with SME performance, and the moderating effect of debt financing is more significant in low-tech industries. Specifically, debt financing accentuates (attenuates) the positive effect of HC (SC and CE) on the performance of low-tech SMEs.

This study offers a valuable framework for managers and policymakers when considering the role of debt financing in the IC components – SME performance relationship in distinctive industrial environments.

This study provides new insights into the close and complex relationships between IC components, debt financing and SME performance.

This paper aims to propose that firms located in science and technology parks (STP) developing corporate social responsibility practices can attract talented workers as an effective knowledge management spillover mechanism.

A longitudinal study has been carried out from the Spanish Panel of Technological Innovation database (PITEC). The statistical method used for data treatment has been a logistic regression for panel data.

Empirical results show a positive moderating effect of corporate social responsibility practices on the relationship between the firm’s belonging to a STP and talent attraction.

This research follows previous claim for additional research on the phenomenon of talent management and clusters and STP. In that sense, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous empirical research about the complementarily effect of corporate social responsibility practices and the belonging to a STP in talent attraction.

This study aims to examine the entrepreneurship profiles of migrants and refugees relying on a neo-configurational approach that increases understanding of causal complexity, equifinality and causal asymmetry patterns to high entrepreneurial intentions in the two groups.

Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, the authors analysed 52 respondents – migrants and refugees. The findings show the existence of equifinality in which different configurations can lead to high and low entrepreneurial intentions, underlying that traumatic experiences have a major role in entrepreneurial intention. It also demonstrates that core conditions are associated with refugee’s configurations and causal asymmetry. The cross-sectional character of this research impedes the searching for a better causal relationship. The lack of studies that approach the subject of refugees makes it challenging to develop a robust theory in this sense.

The paper highlights five main configurations – two related to migrants’ profile and three related to refugees’ profile – that enable expanding the current knowledge and practices to better customize practices to increase entrepreneurial intention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research using a configurational approach to explore migrant and refugee entrepreneurship intention profiles.

The purpose of this guest editorial is to highlight the importance of knowledge management and organizational learning in firm innovation, offering an integrative framework to understand this complex business phenomenon.

Based on the literature review, the guest editorial shows a general review on “A Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation” articulating and integrating a total number of ten theoretical and empirical contributions about this topic.

Theoretical and empirical works are organized in three main topics. The first one refers to the importance of external knowledge, networking, and relationships as key drivers of firm technological innovation, offering an “open or relational innovation framework”. The second one shows several papers on the growing importance of KIBS (Knowledge‐Intensive Business Services) in a Knowledge Economy and Society. Finally, this general review integrates papers about organizational context, and its role on knowledge management and firm innovation.

The paper and special issue tries to offer some new relevant advances for the academic community in the growing body of knowledge management and firm innovation. Nevertheless, due to its special issue nature, the theoretical and empirical advances showed on it represent only a partial view of a “Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation”.

Managers need to understand the precise nature and sources (internals and externals) of firm innovation. In this vein, this journal number shows empirical research developed in different countries and industries illustrating some interesting insights about this complex business phenomenon.

This general review shows new lines of theoretical and empirical research regarding knowledge management, organizational learning, and firm innovation in a useful integrative framework: “A Knowledge‐Based View of Firm Innovation”

In the present business landscape, relations between firms are one of the most valuable assets. This work points out the main agents to which firms are related, and which build up their relational capital. This proposal highlights the gathering of agents in different levels; one of them constituted by the relations with customers, suppliers, partners, and investors; and the second one related to the relations with state or public sector entities, regulatory institutions, and with the community, as part of a wider or more general environment. Once presented, relational capital, the strategic relevance of corporate reputation is discussed, with a trigger and moderator role for all the previously mentioned relations.

The elements that constitute the organizational capital or capital of the firm, namely its culture, structure, organizational learning, can be a source of competitive advantage. This paper is an attempt to assess organizational capital from the resource‐based view.

From an extensive literature review, an assessment framework for intellectual capital is developed.

By means of this framework organizational capital can be depicted as a set of: valuable assets; difficult to imitate; to replace; to transfer; with a prolonged life expectancy; and with a feasible rent appropriation.

Building of such an evaluation framework allows further research about other components of the intellectual capital of the firm, bridging the literatures focused on the resource‐based view and on intangible assets or intellectual capital.

The literature shows several intellectual capital models. Nevertheless, there is little empirical evidence about the building blocks that form intellectual capital in practice. The purpose of this paper is to test the widespread categorization of human capital, structural capital, and relational capital with a survey applied to high‐technology firms from Spain.

Factor analysis was conducted with a sample of 49 firms (larger than 50 employees).

The results indeed demonstrate the existence of three main components of intellectual capital that, in general, fit the dominant structure proposed by other authors.

Before moving into an internationally accepted system for classification and measurement of intellectual capital, future research should seek a geographical and industrial agreement about the main components of this construct. In that direction, our empirical evidence provides only the experience of Spanish high‐tech firms; this experience could be different in other countries or industries.

In this paper, managers interested in the field can find a useful guidance for structuring an intellectual capital balance sheet, taking the three proposed components as main dimensions, and the items of the survey as a measurement tool for analyzing the intellectual strengths and weaknesses of their firms.

Academics can also benefit from this research, taking it as a basis for replication studies about intellectual capital in other countries and/or industries. This article presents one of the first empirical tests of the theoretically accepted components of intellectual capital.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of organizational learning on technical innovation and the role of organizational culture as a determinant of the organizational learning processes.

After reviewing the literature on organizational learning and its relationship with both, technical innovation and organizational culture, this paper analyzes those relationships using a sample of 451 firms.

Findings reveal that organizational learning is positively associated with technical innovation and that organizational culture can foster both organizational learning and technical innovation but can also act as a barrier. Additionally, findings show that in order to enhance innovation neither a flexibility focus nor an external focus are enough. Both of them are necessary to characterize organizational culture.

The main limitations of this paper are the cross‐sectional design of the empirical research and the fact that data were collected from one source only.

Findings can guide managers' efforts in the development of an organizational culture which fosters both organizational learning and innovation since they show that adhocracy culture fosters both of them and that a hierarchy culture may act as a barrier for them.

The paper focuses on the little‐researched relations between organizational culture, organizational learning and innovation. Moreover, it focuses on the Spanish context, where there is a lack of studies on this issue. Finally, the paper provides empirical evidence that these relations exist. In particular, adhocracy enhances both learning and innovation the most, while hierarchy inhibits them most.