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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 aim of this paper is to evaluate the use of blockchain for identity management (IdM) in the context of the Internet of things (IoT) while focusing on privacy-preserving approaches and its applications to healthcare scenarios.

The paper describes the most relevant IdM systems focusing on privacy preserving with or without blockchain and evaluates them against ten selected features grouped into three categories: privacy, usability and IoT. Then, it is important to analyze whether blockchain should be used in all scenarios, according to the importance of each feature for different use cases.

Based on analysis of existing systems, Sovrin is the IdM system that covers more features and is based on blockchain. For each of the evaluated use cases, Sovrin and UniquID were the chosen systems.

This paper opens new lines of research for IdM systems in IoT, including challenges related to device identity definition, privacy preserving and new security mechanisms.

This paper contributes to the ongoing research in IdM systems for IoT. The adequacy of blockchain is not only analyzed considering the technology; instead the authors analyze its application to real environments considering the required features for each use case.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate knowledge inheritance theory with the social capital perspective to explain the initial endowments of spinoffs.

The authors maintain that social capital plays a crucial part, both as a mechanism supporting the generation of intellectual capital prior to a spinoff’s foundation, and as an endowment that complements this capital once the spinoff is founded. Knowledge inheritance remains a fundamental mechanism for the formation of a spinoff’s intellectual capital. Its other endowment, social capital, derives from three types of relationship that future entrepreneurs develop within, through and outside their parent firm, all three of which are crucial to the formation of a spinoff’s intellectual capital.

The first result of the theoretical research is an integrative framework of a spinoff’s endowments. Moreover, the authors apply this framework to address two key research questions in the spinoff literature, i.e. whether spinoffs can differ from their parents in terms of intellectual capital; and why spinoffs tend to co-locate near their parents, in geographical clusters. The integrative approach helps to tackle these questions.

This conceptual paper offers a more comprehensive explanation of the emergence of spinoffs in terms of their initial endowments than the knowledge inheritance theory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of inheritance tax behavior with normative value principles and factors found relevant for income tax compliance. Also, it examines the influence of affectedness and earmarking on inheritance tax compliance. Furthermore, it compares two countries similar in tax morale, tax culture as well as dominant normative value principles, Austria and Germany, of which one – Germany – levies inheritance taxes and the other – Austria – is debating its reintroduction.

A two (affected vs nonaffected) by two (Austria vs Germany) by two (inheritance tax vs stock profit tax) by three (no earmarking vs social justice earmarking vs equality of opportunity earmarking) experimental online questionnaire was conducted with 296 Austrians and 230 Germans.

Normative value principles and other socio-psychological variables play an important role concerning inheritance tax behavior. Affectedness does not influence inheritance tax compliance. Earmarking inheritance tax to projects corresponding to these value principles increases inheritance tax compliance in the Austrian sample and could represent a measure to increase inheritance tax compliance in countries implementing inheritance tax or increasing inheritance tax.

This study draws a comprehensive picture of the socio-psychological variables relevant to inheritance tax behavior and tests the effect of earmarking as a policy measure to increase inheritance tax compliance.

Expert systems are being effectively applied to a variety of engineering problems. A growing number of languages and development tools are available for their building. Expert systems building tools (shells) are not so flexible as the high‐level languages, but they are easier to use. The problem is that there are too many development tools on the market today, no standards for their evaluation are available, so it is quite difficult to choose the ‘best’ tool for the developer's/user's needs. This paper is an attempt to review the situation on the confused market. Eighty‐six development tools are described in a table form for easy comparisons. Tools implemented on the AI machines only are not included in this survey.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the inter-organisational dynamics, in terms of the triggers to spin-off formation and the genealogical inheritance of spin-offs, between a parent characterised by an adverse event and the spin-offs that emerge. The study focusses on the nature of the triggering event, exploring the heterogeneous nature of the processes by which some spin-offs are formed to exploit new opportunities created unexpectedly by an adverse event, and on the genealogical inheritance that forms the pre-entry experience of the founder.

A case study based on interview data with founders of spin-offs, supplemented with interviews with managers and industry experts, and with secondary data sources. The case study is of the spin-offs from a successful firm, Élan Corporation, reported to be the world’s 20th largest drug firm in 2002, that experienced an adverse event in 2002. The Élan case offers the opportunity to focus exclusively on what Buenstorf (2009) refers to as necessity spin-offs. Prior to collecting data it was necessary to identify the population of spin-offs from Élan.

This study extends existing research by identifying “opportunistic spin-offs”: spin-offs that occur in the wake of an adverse event where the entrepreneur exploits an unexpected opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship but does not feel compelled to establish the spin-off. These spin-offs are characterised by “unexpected opportunities”, “opportunistic acquisition of assets” and, perhaps reflecting the seniority and experience of those involved, “alternative employment opportunities”.

Understanding the process of spin-off formation is important because it provides insight into how and why individuals initiate new ventures. Spin-offs are an important source of new firms and an important mechanism in the process of industry evolution. The study contributes to the literature on spin-offs by providing evidence of the heterogeneous nature of spin-offs that occur in the aftermath of an adverse event, leading to the classification of some spin-offs as “opportunistic spin-offs”. The study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating that an important trigger for venture creation is unexpected changes in an individual’s employment circumstances.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the inheritance of a business from the Islamic accounting perspective.

The paper adapts the relevant provisions of conventional accounting standards and practices that conform to Sharīʿah (Islamic law). In addition, the provisions of the Islamic accounting standard for musharakah (AAOIFI’s FAS No. 4) found to be relevant are also adapted.

The study shows that the assets of an inherited business should be measured at their fair values and that liabilities and legacies must be deducted therefrom with the view to arriving at the equity (or residue). The equity is then distributed among the heirs based on the sharing ratio established according to the Noble Qurʾān, the Sunnah (the Prophet’s way) and Muslim jurists’ views. Therefore, the inherited business becomes a family business as each heir is admitted into it. By extension, Islam emphasizes that the business should remain a going concern to generate income to sustain the welfare of the heirs.

The discussion of the paper is limited to the inheritance of a business and its going concern in line with the Sharīʿah.

Special attention should be paid to the inherited business to ensure not only its continuity to generate income for the heirs but also that each heir gets a correct share of the equity of the business as regulated by the Sharīʿah.

This study links Islamic inheritance to the going concern of the business, which from all indications has not been given full consideration by previous studies.

Studies on spinoffs neglect firms founded by single individuals (i.e. proprietorships) thus overlooking a large portion of new ventures. Moreover, scholars usually do not consider the effect of the rank, and the amount, of founder’s working experience on spinoff’s survival. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a sample of 3,456 Italian manufacturing proprietorships.

Out of an initial population of some 6,000 firms, the authors obtained a sample of 3,456 usable records with complete information about new ventures and founders’ background. The authors relied on the class of methods known as “proportional hazard models” to perform survival analyses.

Analyses show that spinoffs from surviving parents outlive other startups. Surprisingly, spinoffs from high-ranked positions have comparable hazard rates than other startups while spinoffs from low-ranked positions have lower hazard rates than other startups. Finally, industry-specific working experience has a curvilinear inverted U-shape effect on spinoffs’ survival.

The present study contributes to the debate on spinoffs’ survival and bears important ramifications into the relationship between knowledge inheritance and entrepreneurial dynamic capabilities. It is also helpful in informing public policies aimed at encouraging entrepreneurial activities in the form of new proprietorships.

Focuses on Korean garment manufacturing and the feasibility and benefits of introducing an expert system. Reviews previous literature on knowledge‐based system and describes in detail the stages followed in developing, constructing, testing, evaluating, integrating, implementing and maintaining the expert system. Concludes that an expert system could be used to solve various garment manufacturing problems and would contribute to garment quality improvement through a standardized apparel production process.

Recently, some biologists have argued that the time has come to replace separation between Lamarckism and Darwinism with their connection. The aim of this paper is to understand whether this paradigm shift in the interpretation of biological evolution offers useful insights for dealing with the unresolved issue of how industries and their organizational populations evolve.

Lamarckism and Darwinism are two approaches that have contrasted or interwoven with each other in the study of biological evolution, just as they have in the study of organizational evolution. This paper provides a critical analysis of the long history of the debate through to the recent, revolutionary discoveries in evolutionary microbiology obtained in the wake of the genomic revolution.

From this new research frontier emerge three important findings: adaptive variations are no longer an anomaly that is peculiar to human organizations, but rather correspond to a widely observed phenomenon in the biological world; the same can be said for the process of horizontal replication; Lamarckism and Darwinism are not two mutually exclusive interpretations of evolution but two dimensions of evolution that coexist in various ways. Lamarckian dimension of evolution and the Darwinian one, handled in the light of these results, may help to understand the evolutionary logic that underpins specific stages of the history of industries.

The paper presents a new way of looking at industries and their firms from an evolutionary perspective.