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Top1. Introduction
Forestry is (still) an important economic sector that makes substantial contributions in the rural socioeconomic context and influences environmental conditions. Indeed, forestry can complement traditional agricultural production, generating more income in less dense zones and creating employment (Mourão & Martinho, 2016). Forestry is being increasingly recognized as a critical activity for retaining viable livelihoods within rural areas of many EU countries (Slee, 2006). The agroforestry sector occupies a large part of the EU territory, giving a very important role to agriculture and forestry in the conservation of EU environmental resources (Martins et al., 2014).
Intellectual capital is a concept that exists ever since human beings started working in an organized way, but only in the last few decades, has been discovered and recognized as an essential factor that creates value and increases the efficiency of the sector (Khan et al.., 2020). Intellectual capital can be defined as the organizational resources which comprise its human capital, structural capital, and relational capital (Bontis, 1998)
The intellectual capital approach (Reed et al., 2006) applied to the value chain model (Porter, 1985) has not been much studied. The previous works are oriented towards the knowledge value chain (Bhatiasevi & Dutot, 2014; Bornemann & Wiedenhofer, 2014). There are hardly any papers about the industry value chain, and these are oriented towards intellectual protection or knowledge management (Erickson & Rothberg, 2012). There is no study in the forestry sector with this double approach. This paper combines the intellectual capital approach applied to the value chain model in the forestry industry.
The timber and related industries employ a large number of people, in the extraction, conversion, and finished products sectors and are an important industry in the Iberian Peninsula, that is mostly dominated by SMEs with a few large companies in the organized sector. An investment in intellectual capital can bring improvement in the welfare of the employees and increase the efficiency of the organizations, whether the sector is composed of SMEs or large companies. It is preferable to have trained human resource managers and operations heads as well as scientists who can bring long-term sustainable strategies for small businesses in their area of expertise. Consequently, the companies should strengthen their corporate culture and technological expertise to have more sustainable (Porter, 1985) activities and promote activities that enhance the competitive spirit of their staff (Jardón & Silva, 2017). In addition, the role of manufacturing workers is continuously changing due to the increasing automation of manufacturing processes. This requires workers to build up broader and deeper skills, that can be achieved via a participative knowledge management approach to empower manufacturing workers (conversion and finished product sectors) (Campatelli et al. 2016).