An SNA‐based approach for management control of intellectual capital

Purpose – Within the context of intellectual capital (IC) reporting, social network analysis (SNA) is applied to identify driving factors, which allows it to control the development of intellectual capital. Hence, the aim of the paper is to address an important weakness of established methods for IC management, i.e. their inability to cope with interdependencies between different elements. Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes the method of SNA and its ability to identify IC value drivers. Thereby, the relationships between different key success factors and organisational results are represented as a graph and their interactions are analysed by specific SNA indicators with the aim of identifying appropriate IC control factors. The experience with the proposed new method gained within a vocational education and training centre in Austria during the implementation of an intellectual capital report is presented to illustrate the new method. Findings – The newly introduced approach delivers new kinds of information for management control in an organisation and leads to different selection of indicators than only applying the classical sensitivity model. Practical implications – The paper introduces a new management method for practitioners. Compared to traditional methods such as strategy maps, managers are able to consider interdependencies systematic and indirect effects between factors when selecting control measures. Originality/value – To the authors' knowledge it is the first time that the SNA technique has been used for selecting management control factors based on identified cause‐effect relationships.