Investigating the current state and impact of the intellectual capital academic discipline

October 10, 2013 Editor 0

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to: investigate the current state of intellectual capital (IC) as an academic discipline, and explore the impact of IC on the state of practice. Design/methodology/approach – The most influential articles published in the Journal of Intellectual Capital were identified. Analysis of their cited and citing works was done. Findings – The IC discipline: first, successfully disseminates its knowledge beyond the English-language world but ignores research published in languages other than English; second, has higher self-citation rates; third, uses books for the development of its theoretical foundation; fourth, successfully converts experiential knowledge into academic knowledge; fifth, exerts a limited yet potentially increasing practical impact; and sixth, is at the theoretical consolidation stage of pre-science and is progressing toward becoming a reference discipline. No anomalies in the development of the IC discipline were observed. Practical implications – IC researchers should pay more attention to works published in non-English journals. Given the status of IC as a professional discipline, they should continue using non-peer reviewed sources to convert experiential knowledge into academic knowledge. They also need to promote their research far beyond the traditional IC domain. Originality/value – To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first empirical analysis of the IC discipline from the reference discipline perspective.
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Categories: Interlectual Capital

Tags: academia, discipline, intellectual