Mapping Intellectual Resources : Insights from Critical Modernism

A consensus is emerging that the key to competitive success is becoming the ability to create, leverage, maintain and develop specialised knowledge, competencies and intellectual resources. However little is actually known about the creation, management, utilisation and valuation of such resources. Although a concept such as intellectual capital cannot be precisely defined, this should nor prevent us from employing it in an era where the intangible is rapidly assuming economic, social and psychological supremacy over the tangible. Moving beyond objectivist and purely system theoretic perspectives the point of departure presented here in exploring this emergent dynamic is the set of symmetric and reciprocal relations presupposed in Habermas' theory of communicative action