A RETROSPECTIVE OF EVALUATION MODELS ON INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

Abstract

In the classical theory of economics, capital is one of the three factors of production, in addition to land and labor, and refers in particular to buildings, equipment, and machinery etc., used for the production of other goods (the term physical capital is also used by the specialized literature) (Bratianu and Jianu, 2006). The present study intend to bring to the forefront the main evalluation methods for intellectual capital, as proposed, supported and criticized at the same time by researchers and practitioners. The study offers response to the following research questions: Which are the advantages and disadvantages of the intellectual capital evaluation methods? And what are the main studies approaching the subject of intellectual capital evaluation at international level? The collection and analysis of intellectual capital evaluation models and the non-participative observation are the main instruments used to bring to the forefront the main international existing evaluation frameworks. The information sources representing the base for these researches are especially constituted by articles published in specialized magazines, both from accounting and economics fields, specialized works relevant to the reference field, legislative documents, official documents, press releases and other documents issued by various national and international bodies. The most representative studies bringing to the forefront the evaluation of intellectual capital are the ones elaborated by Mouritsen et al (Mouritsen et al, 2001), Manea and Gorgan (Manea and Gorgan, 2003), Tayles (Tayles, 2002), Tayles et al (Tayles et al, 2007). The presented approaches offer a general idea on the range of methods, disciplines and operational specializations existing for the evaluation of intellectual capital. Only one of them - Balanced Scorecard is largely used, while the rest of the methods remain too theoretical or too poorly developed to be universally accepted. We believe that the efforts from the regulation and standardization bodies in the view of intellectual capital evaluation are too small, despite the fact that community shows an increased interest in this sense, many companies being tempted to build their own system of evaluating performances with regards to intellectual capital.

Keywords

• intellectual capital, evaluation models, companies, Balanced Scorecard, international level