The purpose of this study is to gain an insight about the users' preferences for intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) in the higher education institutions (HEIs) in Norway. This question is addressed by making an inquiry into the ICD preferences and information needs of the two groups of stakeholders: university employees and students. The ICD in the context of the universities has recently gained more attention of researchers. New institutional and political requirements combined with the increased competition in the sector, challenge HEIs to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency in order to gain reputation, legitimacy, and funding. This chapter contributes to the literature on how HEIs can identify, measure, and disclose their knowledge resources. The study revealed a relatively high level of IC importance for the HEIs' stakeholders in Norway. Particular interest was attributed to relational capital and student satisfaction.
TopIntroduction
Managing and reporting intellectual capital (IC) has been identified as one of the major themes in the scope of the literature on knowledge management in higher education (Quarchioni, Paternostro, & Trovarelli, 2020). Knowledge and IC can be understood as both input and output of all processes taking place in the university and defined as a “set of managerial activities aimed at identifying and valuing the knowledge assets of the organisation, leveraging these assets through knowledge sharing, and creating new knowledge” (Hellström & Husted, 2004, p. 166). Intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) has been traditionally viewed as an important tool whose object is knowledge management activity (Mouritsen, Larsen, & Bukh, 2001), and a number of higher education institutions (HEIs) have adopted this tool to a varying degree. Three main research topics have been identified within this scope of literature, which addresses how HEIs identify, manage, measure and report their knowledge assets (Quarchioni et al., 2020). The first topic addresses how HEIs can satisfy the information needs of their stakeholders by disclosing information about their intangible resources. The second investigates how HEIs understand, map, and measure internal components of knowledge. Finally, the third topic focuses on how HEIs can contribute to value creation in their ecosystem via managing and developing IC.
The purpose of this chapter is to gain insight into stakeholders’ preferences for ICD in Norwegian HEIs. By doing so, this study aims to contribute to the first of the abovementioned topics, that is, how HEIs can satisfy the information needs of their stakeholders by providing transparent and relevant IC information.
IC can be defined as “the collection of intangibles that allows an organisation to transfer a collection of material, financial and human resources into a system capable of creating value for the stakeholders” (European Commission, 2006, p. 4). Since the beginning of the 2000s, the majority of the ICD literature has focused on the for-profit sector (Cuozzo et al., 2017; Schaper et al., 2017). It is only recently that the theme of ICD started gaining more attention in the context of universities. To date, very few universities issue specific IC reports or disclose their IC in their annual reports. Hence, the research in the area is still insufficient and presents vast opportunities for further investigation (Bisogno, Dumay, Manes Rossi, & Tartaglia Polcini, 2018; Ndou, Secundo, Dumay, & Gjevori, 2018).
The European university sector is now undergoing a profound change, including new methods for measuring universities’ performance and efficiency, the creation of Europe-wide accreditation agencies, and the introduction of new assessment processes and systems, just to mention a few (Corcoles, 2013). New institutional and political requirements, combined with the increased competition in the sector, challenge HEIs to improve their effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency. Information transparency gains a particularly important role due to its impact on the HEIs’ reputation, legitimacy, and funding.