Intellectual capital and the firm: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Following the global COVID-19 pandemic, attention has shifted to intangible resources, particularly within firms. These resources have emerged as crucial factors for resilience, adaptability, and innovation, enabling firms to meet current and future challenges while achieving the expected performance levels. The pandemic underscored the importance of non-physical assets such as intellectual capital. The objective of this study is to present a quantitative review of the literature on intellectual capital in firms during the post-COVID-19 period. To this end, we conduct a bibliometric analysis based on the PRISMA method to summarize studies on intellectual capital in firms. The Scopus database was chosen due to its extensive coverage and reputation as a benchmark resource for analyzing scientific articles. Through an exhaustive keyword search, 1980 publications were identified. The application of inclusion and exclusion criteria reduced the number of relevant articles to 365.Furthermore, this study graphically presents over three years of bibliographic material, using Vos viewer to provide an overview and identify future research directions. Based on the bibliometric analysis conducted, we reveal the distribution of publications on intellectual capital in firms during the years 2021-2023, the most important journals and authors, the most influential countries, the main research keywords, and the most relevant domain, as well as co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses. This study presents trends, improvement suggestions, and recommendations in the field of intellectual capital in firms.

Keywords

• Intellectual capital, Human capital, Structural capital, Relational capital, Firm, bibliometric analysis