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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the Danish Guideline Project (DGP) and its subsequent fate within participating companies since its conclusion in late 2002. Particular focus is placed on the traction that the intellectual capital statement (ICS) approach to reporting, as the principal outcome of the project, was able to acquire in practice.

Following the reconstruction of the original sample of 102 companies that originally participated in the project, a survey using semi-structured interviews was pursued among 64 individuals who were identified as having some involvement with the guideline project and/or producing ICSs in these companies. In addition to the interviews, a range of secondary information has been used to supplement the primary data and research protocol.

The project was found to have enjoyed only modest success and thereby failed to achieve any substantial traction among the participating companies and related public stakeholders. On balance, however, respondents believed that the exercise had been a positive experience, with benefits for the internal management of the companies, as well as for human capital (employees). The obstacles that radical initiatives such as the ICS continue to face should not be underestimated.

A single study of a specific initiative necessarily entails many limitations. It is conceivable that the views of some of the participants in the guideline project who are absent from the present sample may provide details of a different experience, although it is unlikely that these would seriously challenge the findings reported here.

This study is the first to explore the fate of the critically acclaimed ICS approach among companies participating in the DGP.

Dumay and Garanina (2013) asserted that, even though intellectual capital (IC) researchers would like to continue developing new models, existing models seem to not be used in practice. Nielsen et al. (in press) discovered that almost all companies that were originally involved in the Danish project of guidelines for intellectual capital statements (ICS) have abandoned their work with ICS a few years after the project ended. The purpose of this paper is to inquire the underlying reasons and conditions that drove these organisations to stop using the acquired framework.

This study is based on both survey and in-depth interview data from key employees of 58 organisations. Qualitative content analysis employing thematic coding is used to crystallise aspects among the provided reasons, to categorise them, and to investigate possible relations. Results are interpreted through a conceptual framework containing elements diffusion theory, management fashion and fads theory and lifecycles as well as implementation failure of knowledge management (KM) techniques.

A multitude of reasons and conditions are discovered as having affected companies’ decisions to interrupt their ICS practices. Underlying aspects principally refer to deliberately taken decisions but also to a substantial number of exogenous factors and conditions. Their common denominator is identified in the low perceived value of ICS, both internally from a KM perspective and externally in relation to the disclosure practice. This leads to the conclusion that ICS can be considered a hierarchically diffused management fashion whose implementation within these companies failed, and its lifecycle subsequently ended with rejection.

This study is limited due to the particular composition of the selected research sample, which, together with the qualitative nature of the research, restricts the possibility of any generalisations of the results to the broader field of IC and extra-financial reporting.

It represents a large-scale attempt to directly investigate organisations’ and managers’ reluctances towards ICS measuring and reporting, its perceived value, and the failure of its persistent implementation.

Informed by the findings of a follow-up research study of companies originally involved in the Danish Guideline Project (DGP) for intellectual capital statements (ICS), the purpose of this paper is to provide valuable insights for a potential shift from intellectual capital (IC) reporting, largely informed by an accounting perspective, towards IC-related disclosures.

The paper draws on data obtained from 21 semi-structured interviews with respondents in 16 companies. The respondents were contacted following a genealogical exercise carried out on the 102 companies involved in the DGP between 1999 and 2003.

The interviews suggested a rather critical perspective towards IC reporting using the ICS framework. Despite the attempt of the DGP to establish a reporting standard, a range of experiments resulted in changes to the framework’s original structure. Overall, a trend towards more integrated forms of reporting was discernible, in some part being motivated by the need to reduce the levels of reporting overload. Examples of integration designed to legitimise IC or corporate social responsibility reports, involving issuing them in tandem with a recognised reporting vehicle such as the annual report, were also encountered.

The implications of this study are that timely, value-relevant IC disclosures and compliant reporting, primarily for accountability purposes, have the potential to coexist. In addition to the usual limitations of a semi-structured interview research design, respondents’ difficulties in clearly recalling events during the project after some 10-12 years is a further potential limitation. Additionally, the use of internet-based communication channels for disclosure purposes was in its infancy at the time of the DGP.

The paper provides important insights into the mechanisms of IC disclosure and IC reporting as seen from a practitioner perspective. Implications relevant to the continued development of integrated reporting are also identified.

In 2001, the Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) published a special issue entitled “Managing, measuring and reporting intellectual capital for the new millennium”. After 20 years, we revisit the eight articles in this special issue to trace early developments in interdisciplinary intellectual capital (IC) accounting research, link these developments to the current state of play, and set out an agenda for future research. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper, written reflectively, includes an impact assessment of the articles using citation analysis and a thematic framing of the prominent issues they discussed. We critically reflect on the status of these eight foundational papers after 20 years, before presenting propositions for a multidisciplinary IC research future.

We find that IC research needs to extend beyond organisational boundaries to help improve human rights, human dignity and the human condition as part of the wider interdisciplinary accounting project. We argue that fifth stage IC research can assist because it explores beyond organisational boundaries and helps address the wicked problems of the world.

This paper only investigates the themes found in the AAAJ special issue. However, the implications for researchers are intended to be transformational because, to go forward and help resolve the material issues facing society and the planet, researchers need to move from being observers to participants.

We argue that IC researchers must embrace both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary IC research. This requires IC researchers to reflect on what they are trying to achieve and which issues facing the planet are material.

The paper celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Flamholtz’s seminal paper on the Human Resource Accounting approach to taking people into account, providing a critical review of its progress since that time and offering some thoughts on how the project might now be beneficially shaped.

The paper provides an authoritative review of the progress of the accounting for people project to date.

The continuing exploration of how it might be possible to take people into account is identified to be entering a new and exciting phase.

The authors readily acknowledge that what the paper provides is an account of the evolution of the accounting for people field, which they argue is currently extending into a new and important phase relating to employee health and wellbeing.

The paper’s principal contribution lies in bringing together three authors who have made significant contributions to the topic of accounting for people over the past 50 years.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a personal critical reflection on the future of intellectual capital (IC) based on my experience as an IC researcher, author, editor, teacher and practitioner.

Offers a first-hand reflection on the future of IC, using evidence collected from IC in the field and the author’s personal reflections.

I argue that the authors need to abandon reporting and instead concentrate on how an organisation discloses what “was previously secret or unknown”, so that all stakeholders understand how an organisation takes into consideration ethical, social and environmental impacts in keeping with an eco-systems approach to IC.

While much of the empirical evidence presented in this paper is freely available to all scholars, the interpretation and findings is subjective. Other researchers, given the same opportunity and evidence, may not necessarily make the same conclusions.

We are now on the cusp of the fourth stage of IC research (Dumay, 2013), whereby IC expands its boundaries into the wider eco-system, to “go beyond IC reporting” (Edvinsson, 2013, p. 163).

Offers a critical review of the impact of IC reporting which is relevant to consider because of the newfound resurging interest in IC, based on the current push for integrated reporting ( < IR > ), which arguably contains IC information targeted at investors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between popularity in a social media network and a company’s revenue, expenditure and market value. Additionally, social media networks are analysed as tools for both voluntary and involuntary intellectual capital (IC) disclosure.

These aims are analysed in the context of the football industry. An empirical analysis evaluates the correlations between team and player social media metrics from Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram and their football club’s market value, revenue and player transfer fees. Examples of timely IC disclosure are also reported.

The results indicate that popularity metrics in social media are determinants of the value of human and relational capital in professional football clubs. Popularity in social media positively correlates to market capitalisation, revenue and player transfer fees. Additionally, examples are provided to show how social media can be a tool for disclosing IC information in a relevant and timely manner.

From a strategic management perspective, the authors find that there are economic opportunities to be gained from managing social media platforms appropriately and that knowledge derived from social media needs to be used effectively by club managers, so that fans and followers can be transformed into consumers. One practical implication of this research is the need to hire social media experts that are able to develop, coordinate and manage digital communication strategies.

This paper presents an analysis of emerging changes in technology and communication platforms and different types of disclosure. It aims to demonstrate that the metrics derived from social media can be used as tool to disclose voluntary and involuntary information about IC – information that is particularly useful to investors because their shortage of tangible assets can make football clubs difficult to evaluate.

This paper discusses the differences and complementarities of the two guidelines for managing, measuring and reporting intellectual capital (IC) that has been developed by the Meritum research group and the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, respectively. IC is closely related to knowledge management and the guidelines describe how to identify a company's knowledge management strategy including the identification of its objectives, initiatives and results in the formation, application and development of the company's knowledge resources. The guidelines also show how to measure IC and communicate the strategy to the stakeholders. The paper outlines the common background for the guidelines, the content of the guidelines and concludes after a comparison with a discussion of the need for research in the area and improvement of future guidelines.