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This paper aims to demonstrate the need for universities to include information on intellectual capital in their accounting information system.

An empirical study was conducted to discover the extent to which the different users of university accounting information are now demanding information concerning intellectual capital in order to make the right decisions. To this end a questionnaire was designed and sent to all the members of the Social Councils of Spain's public universities.

The findings show the opinion of university accounting information users regarding the need for universities to publish information on their intellectual capital in order to make the current model of university accounting information more relevant.

The results of this research show the intangible elements about which universities should provide information in order to satisfy their users' new information demands.

No previous research in this area has been conducted for Spanish universities. This paper brings new expertise regarding the traditional information supplied by universities, which needs to be extended to include information on intellectual capital. Giving users access to a type of information that is relevant for good decision‐making constitutes a healthy exercise in transparency for universities.

For better mapping the path of intellectual capital (IC) research, the purpose of this paper is to selectively review empirical studies of IC published, and identify theories, components and three dimensions of analysis: national IC (NIC), regional IC (RIC) and organizational IC (OIC).

The systematic literature review (SLR) subject to analysis is based on empirical studies made between 1960 and 2016, and focuses on three dimensions of analysis: NIC, RIC and OIC. Four research questions were designed, using the following databases, namely, Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, for data collection purposes.

The SLR unveils a multidimensional taxonomy for measuring and classifying the type of IC applicable to the different levels of analysis and provides some recommendations for future studies of NIC, RIC and OIC, by outlining the need for clear definitions of components and measures of IC and identifying strengths, limitations and future research avenues.

In order to fill the gap found in the literature and the non-existence of a study clarifying the multiple dimensions of analysis of IC, this SLR makes a twofold, original contribution to the literature on management: providing an SLR of the main empirical studies dealing with different units of analysis; and identifying a multidimensional taxonomy for measuring and classifying the type of IC applicable to the different levels of analysis.