Levers and barriers to the implementation of intellectual capital reports: A field study

By analyzing the evolution of the Intellectual Capital (IC) discourse, it is possible to notice that both scholars and practitioners have proposed a plethora of IC concepts and reporting frameworks none of which can be considered as generally accepted. This situation has implied that each company has defined its own specific IC reporting agenda according to its specific purposes. Despite the various benefits attributed ex ante, some scholars have highlighted that IC reporting is more preached than practiced and that several adopters have abandoned this practice. This situation makes urgent a reflection on how measuring IC can help realize the benefits usually attributed to it and, thus, which are the levers and the barriers that can influence the successful implementation of an IC report (ICR) and, consequently, its fate. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the levers and barriers to the implementation of ICRs from a longitudinal perspective thus contributing to the third stage of IC research. The main findings are the followings. First, our study confirms and supports many of the levers and barriers that have been identified in the literature review but it highlights that they can vary in space and in time. Second, our study suggests that some aspects, such as ambiguity of aims or indicators and the existence of grand theories, can act both as levers and as barriers in dependence of some organizational aspects and of the development, over time, of the IC reporting project. Third, our study also highlights that, in Italy, the ICR experience seems to have been dragged, at least partly, by that of Corporate Social Responsibility reporting. Forth, our research confirms the relevance of project leaders and project sponsors in determining the fate of an IC project but it also points out the relevance of the role played by the external partners (consultants and in few cases university researchers).