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The purpose of this research is to provide a critical review of the intellectual capital (IC) research in hospitality and tourism (HT) literature.

This study uses 141 research papers published on IC in HT between 2003 and 2021 to offer the findings of a systematic review of publications that cover the issue of IC as a holistic concept, rather than just a component of it, within the sector.

The progress on the topic is addressed. The authors' findings also reveal the related research productivity, main themes compared to other service sectors and methodologies applied in the knowledge field. In order to provide a tangible structure in the field, a research agenda is offered.

This study analyzed the development of IC research in the HT literature by focusing on journal articles in the Scopus database. The findings could aid researchers in (re)designing their study goals so they may add to both general IC literature and literature related to HT.

A strong positive relationship between IC and HT organizations’ performance has been demonstrated, but no study has previously mapped the research constituents of publications in IC research. To contribute to the endeavor of knowledge consolidation on this subject, the authors' paper covers the research that has been done so far on the under-researched issue of IC in HT from a new perspective.

The public sector is one of the least addressed areas of intellectual capital (IC) research. Universities are an interesting area of investigation because they are considered critical players in the knowledge-based society. The purpose of this paper is to develop a more general, flexible and comprehensive “IC Maturity Model” for Universities (ICMM), a framework for defining and implementing IC measurement and management approaches, as part of the whole strategic management of universities. Thus, the ICMM proposes a staged framework to initiate a step-by-step change within a university based upon its current level of IC management maturity. The different steps of maturity might be an answer to cope with the huge diversity of European universities, some of which have strong managerial orientation, while others follow collegial forms of governance.

The research approach is based on what has been called the “third stage” of IC research (Dumay and Garanina, 2013), focused on the practices of IC approaches rather than on its theoretical conceptualisation. The ICMM has been developed under the “Quality Assurance in Higher Education through Habilitation and Auditing” project framework, initiated by the Executive Agency for Higher Education and Research Funding of Romania (EUFISCDI). Three Mutual Learning Workshops (MLWs) were organised as a mean to bring together 15 international experts and practitioners to share their views and experience on IC reporting and setting up task forces.

An ICMM, which is a flexible model of implementing IC approaches within public universities, is developed. The ICMM provides a theoretical continuum along which the process of maturity can be developed incrementally from one level to the next, moving from IC data collection, awareness of IC, adjustment of IC specific indicators, measurement of IC, reporting of IC, interpretation and decision making, strategy and planning.

Future research needs to conduct empirical studies in universities to generalise the effectiveness of the ICMM model and guidelines for implementation.

The ICMM provides a staged framework to initiate a step-by-step change within a university based upon its current level of IC management maturity and its IC value creation dynamics. It allows universities to follow different paths, not necessarily a linear sequence.

Although several methods for IC measurement and management exist, most of these cannot accommodate the trade-off between the comparability aims and the efforts to capture the institution’s uniqueness when designing an IC model.

The phenomenon of intellectual capital in the firm has been deeply researched and immensely debated in the management literature in recent years. After three decades of evolution, it has become established as a mature field of research. At this point, a review of its theoretical foundations and current and future evolution provides us with the state of the art of intellectual capital in the firm. The purpose of this paper is to present a quantitative review of the existing literature on intellectual capital in the firm.

In this paper, the authors present a quantitative review of the existing literature on intellectual capital in the firm. To do so, the authors searched the JCR-SSCI database from 1990 to 2016 and identified 553 citing documents; these were split into three main periods in order to identify the interactions and path dependencies existing between different foundations of research. In addition, areas of current and future research connected with the theoretical foundations were identified. For these purposes, the authors used both co-citation analyses as well as bibliographical coupling.

In this paper, three main stages of IC evolution have been identified with the main topics and research frames, as well as their path dependencies. Additionally, four main areas of current and future development of IC have been identified: IC measurement, IC in new business models, IC disclosure, and its role in social capital and human resource practices.

The present bibliometric study is a quantitative review of papers published in the Web of Science database.

By its dimensions ‒ broad academic disciplines and longitudinal character ‒ this bibliometric study constitutes a new quantitative review of the IC discipline, both drawing its intellectual evolution in the last decades, and showing current and future research trends in IC and the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of a university that uses a collective intelligence approach for managing its intellectual capital (IC). Specifically, the authors investigate how one of Europe’s oldest business schools, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), manages IC through stakeholder engagement to achieve academia’s third mission so contributing to social and economic development.

Data are collected through semi-structured interviews and Ca’ Foscari University’s strategic plan. Secundo et al.’s (2016) collective intelligence framework is used to analyse the data. Alvesson and Deetz’s (2000, pp. 19-20) critical management tasks – insight, critique and transformative redefinition – are adopted to frame and discuss the results.

On the assumption that a university is a collective intelligence system, the findings demonstrate that IC management needs to change to incorporate an ecosystem perspective, reflecting the fourth stage of IC research. The IC management at the university incorporates its core goal (what), the collective involvement of internal and external stakeholders to achieve the goal (who), the motivations behind the achievement of the goal (why) and, finally, the processes activated inside the university (how) and indicators to assess value creation.

A new perspective for managing IC in universities that adopts a collective intelligence approach is further developed. Contributions to the fourth stage of IC research – IC in an ecosystem – are highlighted that expand the concept of IC value creation beyond universities into wider society.

Two key consequences of this case study are that more stakeholders have become involved in IC management and that IC management requires critical rethinking, given the universities’ evolving role.

This paper brings together issues that are usually dealt with in separate domains of the literature: IC management and collective intelligence in the university setting.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new framework for managing intellectual capital (IC) inside a university considering the collective intelligence perspective.

The research method uses the fourth stage of IC research and adopts the collective intelligence approach. The underlying assumption behind the framework is to consider the university as a collective intelligence system in which the tangible and intellectual assets are coordinated towards the achievement of strategic goals.

The conceptual framework for IC management harnesses the power of IC, collectively created by the engagement of multiple stakeholders inside the university network. The main components are the final goal of a university (what); the collective human capital to achieve the goal (who); the processes activated inside the university (how); and finally the motivations behind the achievement of the goal (why).

The research is exploratory and the framework offers opportunities for refinement. Future research is needed to verify the application of the framework to other organisations in the public sector intended as collective intelligence systems. A new perspective for managing IC in universities adopting the collective intelligence approach is developed. Contribution to the fourth stage (ecosystem) of IC research is highlighted, expanding the concept of IC value creation beyond the university into wider society.

The framework can be used to manage IC strategically in all the systems interpreted as collective intelligence systems in which the role of IC creation from multiple actors is relevant. This makes possible the understanding of how IC helps create value for the society and the region in which the university operates.

The originality of the paper is in bringing together issues usually dealt within the literature in separate domains, such as IC management and collective intelligence perspective. The concept of collective intelligence remains an unexplored field in relation to IC management in the public sector. The collective intelligence approach provides a novel contribution to managing IC and is intended to inspire future research.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of referring to a theory of the firm as a way to strongly improve internal consistency in both research and practice. To this end, the paper explores how a theory-of-the-firm perspective can assist in a consistent analysis of IC, focusing on five IC-related issues: the definition and the origins of IC; the set of property rights on IC; its role in the competitive advantage and the value generation process of the firm; the way IC can be valued, including issues relating to the internal and external reporting; and finally the most efficient way to effectively manage and control IC. Analysis is carried out referring to the strengths and weaknesses of the resource-based view (RBV), being the main reference theories for IC scholars and practitioners.

The paper employs a deductive approach to explore how different theories of the firm shape the way IC-related issues could be consistently analysed.

The research finds that referring to a theory of the firm assists investigating IC-related issues. It carries out the analysis of five important issues under the two forms of the RBV, demonstrating how a different theory of the firm differentiates analysis and offers room for improving the internal consistency for both research and practice.

Implications of the paper are mainly for improving consistency in research, but they also support practice as for consciousness and awareness. Limitations are as follows. First, the paper offers an analysis of only two selected theories of the firm. Second, the analysis is based on a deductive reasoning which can be criticised for the results, even if not for the aim.

The paper offer stimuli to both theoretical and empirical research and practice. As for research, the paper highlights how consistency can be developed and also focusses on the way empirical research could be consistently carried out. As for practitioners, the paper assists in enlightening covered links between practice and theories.

The paper pays attention to the role of the theory of the firm, as a way for improving internal consistency in the study and the practice of IC.

Universities concerned with third mission activities are engines that increase regional competitiveness since their primary role in the knowledge-based economy is to stimulate innovation by transferring new knowledge and technologies to industry and society. The purpose of this paper is to show how IC can be mobilized by university technology transfer offices (TTOs) due to the correlation between efficient university technology transfer and intellectual capital (IC), thus contributing to the third stage of IC research.

The application of the Maturity Model developed by Secundo et al. (2016) is expanded by collecting data from 18 universities in the European countries to illustrate how IC can be used as a strategy and solution to the barriers faced by TTOs.

TTOs with increased access to and utilization of IC tend to have higher maturity levels. This new application of the Maturity Model, proves that IC can be utilized to manage and improve the efficiency of TTOs.

An indication of the level of access that TTOs have to university IC is given leading to recommendations to improve university technology transfer. Future research should include a wider sample of universities to increase the validation of the Maturity Model and to prove it as a suitable and strategic approach for IC management at TTOs.

Knowing which IC components are essential for the efficiency of TTOs, and which IC needs greater utilization, will provide insights into policy and practical interventions to improve their efficiency, resulting in increasing universities’ competitiveness.

A new approach and perspective on utilizing IC to improve university technology transfer to contribute to the third stage of IC research calling for more practice-oriented research.

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 threefold purpose of this paper is to reflect on the evolution and transformation of the Journal of Intellectual Capital (JIC) over the past 20 years, to project its future research directions, and, finally, to propose an IC ecosystem.

We adopted a combination of a narrative and a systematic review of 700 JIC papers appearing in the journal in its entirety, from Volume 1 (2000) to Volume 20 (2019). The categorization of topics is based on the frequency of keywords in the titles of the papers.

Scholars have proposed four stages of intellectual capital (IC) research: definition/awareness, measurement/management, implementation/strategy, and ecosystem. Over the past 20 years, a total of 16 special issues were published in the journal. The five topics with the highest paper counts in descending order are country-specific studies, concept papers, reporting and disclosure, measurement and performance. Four issues require the researcher’s special attention: theoretical development, IC research methodology, national intellectual capital, and data collection. An IC ecosystem is proposed to invite discussion and refinement. For future research, ecosystem-oriented and interdisciplinary research are suggested. Research design aimed at achieving Sustainable Development Goals are encouraged.

Intellectual capital research has implications for four major types of stakeholders, namely academia, government agencies, practitioners, and top management team of organizations. The major limitation of this research is that this review of twenty years of intellectual capital research is limited exclusively to the papers published in the JIC; IC papers published in relevant journals or conferences were not included.

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the articles published in the first 20 volumes of the JIC. The field of intellectual capital has evolved from the social construction of IC knowledge to IC knowledge diffusion and inheritance. Hopefully, a fully developed IC ecosystem will eventually emerge. IC researchers can position themselves in the IC research continuum and devise distinctive pathways to enhance their contributions to the transformation of IC research.

The purpose of this paper is to present a structured literature review of the public sector intellectual capital (IC) literature. It is, in part, motivated by a recent review of the IC literature by Guthrie et al. (2012, p. 74), who found that the public sector is one of the least addressed areas of IC research.

This paper presents a structured literature review of public sector IC articles that is as up to date as possible. The authors use and update the dataset from Guthrie et al. (2012) to include another five plus years of data, including seven articles appearing in this special issue.

The public sector IC has a primary research focus on central government and central government agencies, education (especially universities), Europe (especially Italy and Spain) and empirical research using case studies mainly investigating management control and strategy. It appears public sector IC researchers are firmly entrenched in performative third-stage research, investigating “how” IC works in organisations rather than offering normative solutions.

Three areas offered as a way of forwarding public sector IC research. First, there is a need to expand public sector IC research from beyond the confines of education (university) research. There is also an opportunity for a study to synthesise the findings. Second, there is also a need for more longitudinal research in public sector IC because IC is not an event, but a journey. Third, there is an opportunity for researchers to undertake empirical research with organisations to develop and test IC frameworks and models in specific public sector contexts.

The authors call for researchers to consider helping public sector practitioners implement IC frameworks and models through interventionist research. In keeping with the performative third-stage IC research agenda, interventionist research makes it possible for academic researchers to act as a catalyst for implementing IC frameworks and models in practice.

This paper is a must read for IC researchers wanting to embark on public sector research. The paper outlines how public sector IC research has developed, offers critique and outlines future opportunities for research that has potential impact, rather than concentrating on already well-researched contexts.