A multidimensional view of intellectual capital: the impact on organizational performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore intellectual capital (IC) from a multidimensional perspective and its relationship with organizational performance (OP) within Iranian public listed companies. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data from Chief Financial Officers in 128 companies within Tehran Stock Exchange were collected and analyzed using partial least squares regressions. Findings – The findings suggest that organizational culture plays a significant role in developing human capital and structural capital while trust is a major determinant of all the IC components, namely human, structural, relational, and social capital. The results also confirm that the investment in human, structural, and relational capital could potentially bring about OP improvement in Iranian public listed companies. Practical implications – A synthesis of various sub-elements of IC supports executives in detecting, capturing, and assessing the different kinds of knowledge resources which must be taken into consideration individually for maximizing OP. Such multidimensional and comprehensive conceptualization of IC would assist organizations to remedy the inefficiency in the exploitation of IC and thereby providing a robust system in order to capture and measure IC more effectively. Originality/value – This study combines literature on IC across diverse academic fields. The multidimensional conceptualization of IC with four sub-dimensions (i.e. human, structural, relational, and social capital) as well as supplementing two antecedent constructs (trust and organizational culture) offer a more systematic manner to synthesize several knowledge-based drivers toward performance which have not been addressed simultaneously in a comprehensive framework.