Investigating the current state and impact of the intellectual capital academic discipline
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.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study is kindly supported by the research grant 864-07-0181 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The authors are grateful to Madora Moshonsky for her assistance with data analysis.
Citation
Serenko, A. and Bontis, N. (2013), "Investigating the current state and impact of the intellectual capital academic discipline", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 476-500. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-11-2012-0099
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited