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The growth of the so‐called “knowledge economy”, whereby the primary sources of firm value are claimed to be an increasing reliance upon the exploitation and management of intangible assets that are not reported in company balance sheets, has led to a questioning of the continued relevance of conventional financial reporting and internal management information and control systems. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the criticisms and proposed alternatives to conventional financial reporting and management control practices. As public policy makers appear to be increasingly convinced that there is an economically damaging “gap” in terms of small and medium size enterprise (SME) stakeholder understanding of intangible asset management, the paper also evaluates the arguments and evidence concerning the applicability and relevance of the problems and proposed alternatives to SMEs.

The paper reviews the criticisms, empirical evidence and proposals to improve financial reporting and internal management control practices by incorporating information on the value of intangible assets and in developing tools for better managing these assets.

The problems associated with identifying and valuing intangible assets and the fact that capitalising income (net profit) using an appropriate risk‐adjusted cost‐of‐capital provides an adequate estimate of value, appears to make most accounting researchers highly sceptical of either the need or desirability of including intangible asset values in the balance sheet. Moreover, the suggestion that firms – particularly SMEs – could increase their value by adopting more formal and comprehensive intangible asset management systems is highly suspect and appears not to be borne out in practice.

The case study evidence in relation to the benefits to SMEs from adopting such tools – even when such tools have been specifically designed for SMEs and, along with consultancy advice, are made freely available to firms – is not encouraging and, in the view of this writer, does not provide any firm justification for significant further public involvement beyond considering including the topic in business start up course syllabuses.

The paper provides the first review of the relevance to the SME sector of the by now extensive conceptual and empirical body of work on the valuation, reporting and management of intangible assets.

To explore the role of intangible project management assets in achievement of competitive advantage from the project management process through it being valuable, rare, inimitable, and having organizational support.

Data were collected on tangible and intangible project management process assets and competitive characteristics of the project management process using an online survey of North American Project Management Institute™ members. Three key tangible asset factors, one intangible asset factor, and three competitive characteristics were identified using exploratory factor analysis. The relationship between these project management assets and project management process characteristics are examined using multivariate analysis.

Intangible project management assets are found to be a source of competitive advantage, directly and through a mediating role in the relationship between tangible project management assets and the competitive characteristics of the project management process.

This study highlights the importance of developing intangible project management assets, in addition to investment in tangible project management assets, to achieve competitive advantage from the process.

This was an exploratory study. The authors expect to further develop the instrument, refine the model and constructs, and test it with a larger sample.

Few papers have used the Resource Based View lens and applied it to project management. This paper contributes to the literature on the Resource Based View of the firm and to an improved understanding of project management as a source of competitive advantage.

This article attempts to contribute to the development of a positive theory on the management of intangibles by building a model that describes the process followed by business firms willing to implement a system for the management of intangibles. The study reveals that companies usually take three steps: the identification of critical intangibles related to value creation, the measurement of those intangibles by means of a set of indicators and, finally, the monitoring of intangible resources and activities.

The future success of organizations increasingly depends on what they know rather than what they do. Knowledge is embedded in a number of distinct types of intangibles in an organization. Management of intangibles requires different tools and approaches than those commonly used to manage industrial‐era tangibles‐based businesses. The purpose of this article is to propose a simple framework for management of knowledge intangibles.

The author examines and synthesizes a number of new and/or prominent theories of management (such as intellectual capital, business performance management, innovation and network analysis) through the lens of her 25 years of practical experience as a financier and strategy consultant helping companies create intangibles management capabilities.

The result is a set of ten concepts that together provide a primer on the management of intangibles. Each concept is presented together with its tangible counterpart to help the reader envision its role in the organization. The concepts are: knowledge is the new oil; intangibles are the new raw material; intellectual capital is the new factory; i‐capex is the new capital expenditure; assessment is the new ROI; performance measurement is the new scorecard; innovation is the new strategy; orchestration is the new command and control; maps are the new organization chart; and reputation is the new bottom line.

The article includes exercises to enable the reader to apply each of the ten concepts in his or her own organization.

The article helps executives increase their understanding of diverse trends by filtering them through the lens of intangibles management. Understanding of these concepts is increased through comparison with the common building blocks of tangibles management. The article introduces two original concepts: intellectual capital seen as the “new factory” and spending on intangibles seen as “intellectual capital expenditures.”

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a meso-level (organizational) social capital theoretical approach to public relations. A theory and conceptualization of social capital as a resource- and exchange-based function of public relations is proposed. Here it is argued that public relations professionals serve as the managers of intangible resources on behalf of organizations. These intangibles serve as social capital for organizations and are managed through strategic, goal-directed communication behaviors. Social capital is conceptualized alongside other forms of capital that contribute to organizational advantage. The author proposes a conceptual social capital model of public relations and argues that the strategic management of intangible resources as social capital offers an ontology for public relations.

The author employed a process of open-system theory building. Extensive research from multi-disciplinary areas of scholarship – namely, sociology, business, and public relations – formed the basis for the conceptualized model and propositions.

Public relations theory is narrowly defined and does not offer an adequate ontology. This paper extends and refines existing public relations scholarship surrounding social capital to focus on competitive advantages for the organization. This paper uses input from the larger fields of sociology and business, while contextualizing social capital within the public relations scholarship. The result is a resource- and exchange-based social capital model of public relations and propositions for further theory building and empirical analyses.

The public relations discipline often struggles to demonstrate return-on-investment for organizations. The social capital model of public relations offers support for the capital generation and maintenance role of public relations for organizational advantage.

This paper represents one of the first comprehensive attempts at developing a meso-level social capital theory of public relations focused on intangible resource management for the organization.

This paper aims to use a grounded theory approach to reveal that corporate private disclosure content has structure and this is critical in making “invisible” intangibles in corporate value creation visible to capital market participants.

A grounded theory approach is used to develop novel empirical patterns concerning the nature of corporate disclosure content in the form of narrative. This is further developed using literature of value creation and of narrative.

Structure to content is based on common underlying value creation and narrative structures, and the use of similar categories of corporate intangibles in corporate disclosure cases. It is also based on common change or response qualities of the value creation story as well as persistence in telling the core value creation story. The disclosure is a source of information per se and also creates an informed context for capital market participants to interpret the meaning of new events in a more informed way.

These insights into the structure of private disclosure content are different to the views of relevant information content implied in public disclosure means such as in financial reports or in the demands of stock exchanges for “material” or price sensitive information. They are also different to conventional academic concepts of (capital market) value relevance.

This analysis further develops the grounded theory insights into disclosure content and could help improve new disclosure guidance by regulators.

The insights create many new opportunities for developing theory and enhancing public disclosure content. The paper illustrates this potential by exploring new ways of measuring the value relevance of this novel form of contextual information and associated benchmarks. This connects value creation narrative to a conventional value relevance view and could stimulate new types of market event studies.

Intangibles are becoming increasingly important to the scientific community as well as the business world. This is mainly due to a highly competitive business environment combined with exceptionally limited resources and the growing importance of knowledge as a commodity. The fluctuating differences between market and book values of companies indicate the extent of the intangibles' rising importance. By focusing on major publications since 1997, this paper critically analyzes current trends and differing views in this field. The publications are analyzed according to their content and methodologies. Review of the literature clearly shows that most publications in this area still lack a theoretical foundation. A large number of differing terms and definitions are present. Much of the literature analyzed here also fails to provide detailed suggestions for the management of intangibles, be they theory‐based or empirically‐derived. Discussion of these issues generally remains on a very abstract level. Research on intangibles is characterized by a large variety of views and interpretations – dominant schools of thought have yet to develop. This situation offers much opportunity for further research in this important field of management.

This paper is focused on studying homogenous structure for tangible and intangible measurement systems. The aim is (1) to develop a conceptual homegenous structure for the combined tangible and intangible measurement and management system, (2) to present the connection between tangible and intangible measurement and management systems (3) to discuss the benefit of a developed system. The literature on intellectual capital (IC) advocates the use of an IC measurement system and stresses the importance of strategic planning and development. This paper describes how the structure of BSC can beutilized for both tangible and intangible measurement systems. The paper also illustrates the link between tangible and intangible systems. From the prior research a conceptual framework for the BSC‐based IC with causalities between perspectives is presented in the paper and used in the developed system. The paper is a conceptual analysis and provides a new innovative model for empirical testing.

The competitive model has changed. In this context, society entered into an era in which intangible assets are the greatest assets of a company. However, some gaps and uncertainties are presented in the literature as to understand the value of a company based on knowledge intensive activities. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the methods of evaluation of intangible assets in the context of business, economic and strategic management.

This is a qualitative research. This research is characterized as descriptive, bibliographic, inductive.

The main results of this research can highlight the existence of valuation methods of intangible assets intended for specific industries, as public and/or private, that can be better aligned to the context of business; economic and/or strategic management.

It was found that intangible assets are a current topic and increasingly addressed in the literature.

This paper aims to propose a framework for intangible asset management in business and industrial organizations. The proposed framework is applied to a case example company in the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

The proposed framework refines the strategy map concept in the balanced scorecard approach for use in intangible asset management. There are two phases, the top‐down phase involving a four‐step intangible asset identification process and the bottom‐up phase establishing the cause‐effect relationships between the intangible assets of the various functional departments in the organization and its financial performance.

Intangible assets belong to different functional departments. They must be carefully monitored and properly nurtured by the organization. Intangible assets depend not only on the type of functional departments but also the type of industries. To be competitive in today's knowledge economy, it is vital for business and industry to identify and locate the intangible assets in their functional departments and then establish how they contribute to the financial performance of the organization.

Understanding of the framework will lead to tangible benefits and competitive advantage once the intangible assets are brought under control, properly managed, and suitably funded.