Managing and disclosing intangibles in joint-ventures: a decision-making information system

The aim of the paper is to propose an Intellectual Capital Measurement and Evaluation System that can support all of the steps of a Joint Venture decision-making process. More specifically, the paper shows that this system can be particularly important in the design and in the management phases to govern intangibles and to disclose information to the partners and the stakeholders of a JV (e.g. banks and minority shareholders). In fact, a company’s “invisible dimension” cannot be reported with financial statements or traditional reporting tools. More specifically, the proposed system could be of help in determining the value of the intangibles that each firm transfers to the JV, in reporting it to the partners and also in negotiating equity holdings. Moreover, during the JV design phase, the system permits analysing and measuring the properties of the transferred intangibles while in the management phase it allows monitoring and reporting the intellectual capital.