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The purpose of this paper is to provide an up-to-the-minute literature review of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) to: identify the major themes developed within this research stream; investigate the evolution of the theory; and derive insights to guide future research agendas for the benefit of researchers and ICD users.

Research articles from ten relevant journals for the 17-year period between 2000 and 2017 are categorised and analysed in a structured literature review (Massaro et al., 2016) to answer these three research questions. This study adds to a data set established by Guthrie et al. (2012) and presents the results in a consistent and comparable manner across the studies.

A lack of significant innovation in the evolution of ICD indicates that this research stream may have been a victim of its own success (Dumay and Guthrie, 2017). Stuck in overview mode, studies continue to fixate on general issues, largely drawing their analysis from the corporate reports of publicly listed companies in Europe. Very few studies examine ICD in the USA and beyond, nor do they drill down to organisational level to examine ICD in practice.

We academics need to leave our ivory towers and base future research on how organisations, in different contexts, using different languages, harness intangible assets to create value. Without discouraging content analysis from corporate reports, we need to be more innovative in searching for IC from the rich variety of media resources modern corporate communication channels offer, and recognise that, while we are all working towards the same thing, we may not be using the same language to get there.

Despite extending previous work, this study highlights some of the new insights revealed from ICD research, especially over the last two years. The findings regarding differing use of terminology across continents, a general decline in published research due to lack of interest or new ground to cover, and zero evidence for a “groundswell” of IC disclosures by listed companies should motivate further reading in many researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on intellectual capital (IC) in light of the emerging paradigm of Big Data. Through a literature review, this paper provides momentum for researchers and scholars to explore the emerging trends and implications of the Big Data movement in the field of IC.

A literature review highlights novel and emerging issues in IC and Big Data research, focussing on: IC for organisational value, the staged evolution of IC research, and Big Data research from the technological to the managerial paradigm. It is expected that identifying these contributions will help establish future research directions.

A conceptual multi-level framework demonstrates how Big Data validates the need to shift the focus of IC research from organisations to ecosystems. The framework is organised into four sections: “why” – the managerial reasons for incorporating Big Data into IC; “what” – the Big Data typologies that enhance IC practice; “who” – the stakeholders involved in and impacted by Big Data IC value creation; and “how” – the Big Data processes suitable for IC management.

The paper provides many avenues for future research in this emerging area of investigation. The key research questions posed aim to advance the contribution of Big Data to research on IC approaches.

The paper outlines the socio-economic value of Big Data generated by and about organisational ecosystems. It identifies opportunities for existing companies to renew their value propositions through Big Data, and discusses new tools for managing Big Data to support disclosing IC value drivers and creating new intangible assets.

This paper investigates the effects and implications Big Data offers for IC management, in support of the fourth stage of IC research. Additionally, it provides an original interpretation of IC research through the lens of Big Data.

Intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) in universities is gaining increasing attention, especially through the adoption of innovative technologies. Online media, as a relevant source of Big Data, is shifting ICD. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Big Data generated through online media, such as websites and platforms like Facebook, can be used as rich sources of data and viable disclosure channels for ICD in a university.

This is an exploratory case study, following the methodology in Yin (2014), that examines how online media data contributes to closing the ICD gap. The IC disclosed through different online media channels by a private university in Albania is analysed using Secundo et al.’s (2016) collective intelligence framework. The online data sources include the university’s website, Facebook page, periodic reports and statements outlining future goals.

What the authors discover in this research is that IC is an important part of how universities operate, and IC is communicated through social media, although unintentionally. However, this only serves to highlight the importance of IC, and if researchers want to discover IC and understand how it works in an organisation, they need to include social media and a prime resource for developing that understanding.

Most importantly, the findings add to a growing consensus that ICD researchers, and researchers in other management and accounting disciplines, who traditionally rely on annual corporate social responsibility and other periodic reports, they need to change their medium of analysis because these reports no longer can be relied on to understand IC and its impact on an organisation.

Online media tools and the advent of Big Data have created new opportunities for universities to disclose their IC information to stakeholders in a timely manner and to gain relevant insights into their impact on the society. The originality of the paper resides in the contribution of Big Data to the ICD research stream.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new learning and growth perspective for the balanced scorecard (BSC) that includes more specific measures of integrated thinking and value creation to help improve integrated reporting (<IR>). Practical, relevant definitions of these historically vague concepts may improve intangible asset disclosures (IAD) and increase uptake of the<IR> framework.

The paper is conceptual. The authors use organisational learning to theorise about the learning and growth perspective of the BSC, within the context of the practice of IAD.

Several criticisms of IAD, the<IR>framework and the BSC have acted as barriers to implementing the<IR>framework. The improved version of the BSC’s learning and growth perspective, presented in this paper, addresses those criticisms by redefining the concept of integrated thinking (learning) and more fully connecting that learning to future value creation (growth). The model is designed to be used in tandem with the<IR>framework to operationalise integrated thinking. A new BSC strategy map illustrates how this revised learning and growth perspective interacts with the other three BSC perspectives to create long-term shareholder value through the management and growth of knowledge within an organisation.

Organisational learning is an important source of competitive advantage in the modern knowledge economy. Here, the authors encourage further debate on how to report and disclose information on intangible assets, driven by a new conceptual strategy for organisational learning that fully supports the BSC’s capacity to help integrated thinking and future value creation for the<IR>framework.

From its roots as a performance measurement system, the BSC has become a widely used strategy execution tool. The<IR>framework has struggled to gain traction, but still has value in exploring intangible assets and its disclosure from a systems thinking perspective. The model is designed to bring an explicit understanding of how to improve integrated thinking for the<IR>framework facilitating better measurement, management and reporting of human and structural capital. By doing so, the new model enables a firm to use the BSC to engage with<IR>more effectively, which should also be useful for practitioners given the widespread use of the BSC.

The analysis of the BSC’s learning and growth perspective reveals two dichotomies – one between resources and growth, and another between systems and capability. The revised perspective resolves these dichotomies with clear, forward-focused measures of learning and intangible asset growth, and multiple vertical and horizontal connections between the perspective’s four constructs. The authors demonstrate practical paths to value creation through a range of strategic impacts.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory essay evaluating whether involuntary intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) is value relevant to stakeholders. The authors define involuntary disclosure as “what external stakeholders and stakeseekers disclose about a company”. This essay is timely because it lays the foundations for future ICD research that departs from traditional analyses of corporate reports, especially annual reports.

The paper provides a critical reflection on current and future developments in ICD research. The normative arguments rely on the experience and expertise along with examples from the ICD literature and contemporary business media to critique existing ICD research and practice and to offer new ways forward for future research.

In highlighting the limitations of the traditional ICD literature, the authors provide a foundation from which researchers should contemplate a powerful new force in ICD brought about by the rapid transformation in technologies and forces of mass communication. The authors introduce the concept of “involuntary disclosure”, and highlight several key issues that intellectual capital (IC) researchers should consider if they want their academic endeavours to contribute not only to practice, but to a wider environmental and social good.

Involuntary disclosures produced by stakeholders and stakeseekers introduce opportunities and threats to organisations, bringing new risks that impact share value and reputations. How well organisation manage these risks, and the impact inside and outside organisational boundaries, to provide economic, environmental and social value, should provide ample fuel for future transformational IC research.

The most value relevant disclosures are not what an organisation discloses or reports about itself, but rather what stakeholders and stakeseekers communicate. However, how reliable are involuntary disclosures and how can stakeholders and organisations verify IC disclosures coming from outside the organisation? If involuntary IC disclosures are value relevant, how might organisations seek to influence and manage them to serve their ends?

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.

This paper examines the gap between reporting and managers’ behaviour to challenge the current theoretical underpinnings of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practice and research. The authors explore how the key features from IC and integrated reporting can be combined to develop an extended model for companies to comply with EU Directive 2014/95/EU and increase trust in corporate disclosures and reports.

This essay relies on academic literature and examples from practice to critique the theories that explain corporate disclosure and reporting but do not change management behaviour. Based on this critique, the authors argue for a change in the fundamental theories of stewardship to frame a new concept for corporate disclosure incorporating using a multi-capitals framework.

We argue that, while the inconsistency between organisations’ reporting and behaviour persists, increasing, renewing or extending the information disclosed is not enough to instil trust in corporations. Stewardship over a company’s resources is necessary for increasing trust. The unanticipated consequences of dishonest behaviour by managers and shareholders compels a new application of stewardship theory that works as an overarching guide for managerial behaviour and disclosure. Emanating from this new model is a realisation that managers must abandon agency theory in practice, and specifically the bonus contract.

We call for future empirical research to explore the role of stewardship theory within the dynamics of corporate disclosure using the approach. The research implications of those studies should incorporate the potential impacts on management behaviours within a stewardship framework and how those actions, and their outcomes, are disclosed for rebuilding public trust in business.

The implications for integrated reporting and reports complying with the new EU Directive are profound. Both instruments rely on agency theory to coax managers into reducing information asymmetry by disclosing more. However, agency theory only re-affirms the power managers have over corporate information. It does not change their behaviour, nor to act in the interest of all stakeholders as the stewards of an organisation’s resources.

We advocate that, in business education, greater emphasis is needed on how stewardship has a more positive impact on management behaviour than agency, legitimacy and stakeholder theories.

We reflect on the current and compelling issues permeating the international landscape of corporate reporting and disclosure and explain why current theories which explain corporate disclosures do not change behaviour or engender trust in business and offer an alternative disclosure model based on stewardship theory.

It is important to have a literature review to open any special issue as a way of introducing the state-of-the-art topics and link past research with the papers appearing in this special issue on IC in education. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This research uses the structured literature to investigate the state-of-the-art and future directions of IC literature in education. In total, 47 articles are explored including nine from this special issue.

IC in education research is concentrated in Europe and mainly addresses IC in universities. Additionally, current IC research is progressing by examining IC practices inside universities using a third-stage IC approach, with new research also concentrating on third-mission outcomes, thus there is scope to continue IC and education research beyond universities. IC in education can also expand into fifth stage IC research, which abandons the boundaries of the educational institution and concentrate on the impact of IC and education on multiple stakeholders.

Current IC in education research is too narrow and mainly investigates IC in European contexts using case study methodology. However, there is ample scope to widen research that develops new frameworks in different educational and country contexts using a wider range of research methodologies. IC in education needs to expand its boundaries so it does not lose its relevance, and thus be able to contribute to wider policy debates.

This paper presents the current state-of-the-art structured literature review of the articles investigating IC in education.