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.

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