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Academics and practitioners around the world have shown interest in what constitutes the relevant intellectual capital (IC) in firms. However, studies have largely neglected to examine whether IC has identical or different structural elements in various parts of the world. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that country-specific institutional structures may impact the perception of IC, and empirically analyse whether differences exist between five countries drawing on the institutional theory.

This study tests for the differences in the underlying categorizations of IC in a sample consisting of 708 firms across five countries. Confirmatory factor analysis and comparison of different possible IC models are conducted to empirically examine the IC structure.

The results demonstrate that IC has predominantly the same underlying elements across the examined countries. However, trust capital in Finland and renewal capital in Serbia are structurally different compared to other countries.

Institutional theory and multinational corporate superculture can explain the similarity in the IC structures across countries. Specifically, globalized markets carry institutionalized rules, norms, and expectations for the participating firms; under the influence of this superculture, the firms begin to assimilate. Conversely, the differences suggest that some country- and culture-specific differences remain even during the transition to global markets.

This study is among the first to question the assumption that IC has identical structural elements across the world, and merges theories of IC and institutions to explain the possible origins of these differences.

Organizational processes that create conditions to facilitate employee innovativeness have become topical due to the constant demand for organizations to renew themselves. Research shows that human resource management (HRM) practices can been used to create such conditions, but also the important complementary role of organizational trust has been highlighted in this context. In particular, earlier studies have mostly focused on the concept of interpersonal trust. However, impersonal trust (the individual employee’s expectations about the employer organization’s capability and fairness) has recently been suggested to be an equally or even more relevant facilitator supporting the effect of HRM practices on organizational innovativeness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The hypotheses were tested with two large-scale quantitative studies from the forestry and information and communication technology industries in Finland. Structural equation modelling (with LISREL) was used to test hypothesis.

This study shows that effective HRM practices indeed facilitate organizational innovativeness, and that this effect is partially mediated by impersonal trust in the organization. This result contributes to the existing literature and practice of HRM and the management of organizational innovativeness.

Future studies could include also interpersonal trust in order to study trust-innovativeness linkage. The study also examined this phenomenon only in Finnish context and this sets some limitations to the generalizability of the results. In addition, single respondents were used to assess all the variables used in the study. Further studies could improve on this by utilizing more objective measures of organizational innovativeness.

The results suggest that organizations should pay attention to designing HRM practices so that they facilitate the building of impersonal organizational trust. In order to improve innovativeness through organizational trust, it is crucial to develop an organization-wide HRM system, since practices that are inconsistently used can lead to unwanted or inefficient results. Strategic and managerial actions related to HRM could increase employees’ trust in the organization and subsequent conditions for providing continuously innovative solutions.

The authors add to the literature by identifying the connection of HRM practices to contributing to behavioural, process and strategic innovativeness through the mediation of impersonal trust. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is one of few studies and the first systematic large sample study that examines impersonal trust and its relationship between HRM practices and different types of organizational innovativeness.

Organizations face an increasing need to foster trust. However, there are fewer opportunities for developing interpersonal trust and an evident need to establish complementary forms. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of various human resource management (HRM) practices on the impersonal dimensions of organizational trust.

The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 715 respondents from large corporations in the ICT and forest industries in Finland. Structural equation modelling was used.

Employee trust in the whole organization is connected to perceptions of the fairness and functioning of HRM practices. Such practices can therefore be used in order to build the impersonal dimension of organizational trust.

Future studies should also include interpersonal dimensions of organizational trust. Another limitation is that datasets from different industries were merged: future studies should analyze data from the ICT and forest industries separately.

HRM practices are used in all organizations, and could offer a practical solution to the problem of building and retaining trust without developing a special system or specific methods.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the role of trust in the context of organizational relationships. To the best of the researchers' knowledge this is the first study focusing on the impersonal element of organizational trust and its relationship with HRM practices.

Recent empirical studies have suggested that knowledge-based issues are closely related to companies’ innovation performance. However, the majority of research seems to be focused either on static knowledge assets or knowledge processes such as knowledge creation. The purpose of this paper is to concentrate on the conscious and systematic managerial activities for dealing with knowledge in firms (i.e. knowledge management (KM) practices), which aim at innovation performance improvements through proactive management of knowledge assets. The study explores the impact that KM practices have on innovation performance.

The authors provide empirical evidence on how various KM practices influence innovation performance. The results are based on survey data collected in Finland during fall 2013. The authors use partial least squares to test the hypothesized relationships between KM practices and innovation performance.

The authors find that firms are capable of supporting innovation performance through strategic management of knowledge and competence, knowledge-based compensation practices, and information technology practices. The authors also point out that some of the studied KM practices are not directly associated with innovation performance.

This study adds to the knowledge-based view of the firm by demonstrating the significance of the management of knowledge for innovation performance. Furthermore, the division of KM practices into ten types and the provision of the validated scales for measuring these add to the general understanding of KM as a field of theory and practice. This study is valuable also from managerial perspective, as it sheds light on the potentially most effective KM practices to improve companies’ innovation performance.

Modern organizations face an increasing need for trust, yet there are fewer opportunities for the development and maintenance of interpersonal trust, so they cannot rely only on that. There is therefore a need for complementary forms of organizational trust. It is believed that the impersonal element of organizational trust is a useful concept and should be incorporated into the measures. This paper seeks to conceptualize and clarify the impersonal element of organizational trust and develop scales on which to measure it.

The hypothesized model is tested on a sample of 166 respondents with different organizational backgrounds. Confirmatory factor analysis is used.

It was found that impersonal trust in the organizational context consists of two dimensions: capability and fairness, the final scales containing 18 and 13 items, respectively.

A more holistic approach to organizational trust is proposed and a measuring instrument for the impersonal element is provided.

It is suggested that organizational trust is critical for contemporary organizations. Further evaluation and development of the concept require a comprehensive measurement instrument incorporating both interpersonal and impersonal elements. This paper identifies the conceptual domain for the less studied impersonal element of organizational trust, and provides a measurement scale.

The construct of impersonal trust and the measurement scale developed and validated in this study represent a step forward towards the effective and reliable measurement of organizational trust. To the best of the researchers' knowledge, this is the first study to provide a comprehensive, psychometrically sound, operationally valid measure of impersonal trust.

Prior research has confirmed the usefulness of both formal and informal protection mechanisms for governing knowledge flows. However, there is lack of research on the motivation and needs driving firms in their choice of mechanisms for each situation. The aim of this paper is to examine the reasons for choosing formal or informal mechanisms.

The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 209 companies engaged in R&D. A Partial Least Squares was used for the analyses.

This study identifies statistically significant relationships between the protection need and the firm's strategy. The results indicate that there is variance in the use of mechanisms when there is a specific motivation for seeking protection, and when the firm faces difficulties related to protection issues.

The data were gathered in a single country. The results may be different if practices in a culture based more on informal relations, with less efficient patent system, were investigated.

The study provides managers with useful information on the informal protection of knowledge and innovations when resources are limited. In particular, it helps them to identify situations in which informal mechanisms are potentially more useful.

This study adds to the literature by studying quantitatively the relationship between the recognised need for protection and the choice of formal and/or informal protection as a strategy. It combines both formal and informal mechanisms. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the few studies examining HRM-related protection mechanisms.

Organizational performance is increasingly grounded on knowledge-related issues. The two key academic discussions addressing knowledge in organizations are the intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management (KM) literatures. However, there are very few earlier studies systematically combining these approaches and demonstrating how IC assets and their management mechanisms might interact in organizational value creation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and argue a theoretical model depicting the connections between IC, KM practices and organizational performance outcomes.

The paper draws on IC and KM literatures to build a theoretical model on how intellectual asset assets and their management practices interact in producing organizational performance. Several conceptual models and related discussion on the interaction of IC and KM practices are put forth.

Organizational value creation is based on both static (IC assets) and dynamic (KM practices) aspects of organizational knowledge, in various combinations. In this paper, potential interaction effects between IC assets and KM practices in terms of moderation and mediation were conceptually analysed, and four alternative models were proposed on how the knowledge-based issues affect organizational performance.

The paper is purely theoretical without empirical evidence.

The paper suggests that organizational value creation is a function of both possessing valuable intangible assets as well as being able to manage these assets systematically. The four models concerning the interaction of IC assets and KM practices in value creation presented in the paper provide managers with tools to reflect about their own thinking model concerning how knowledge produces value in their own firms.

By addressing both the “static” asset aspect of IC as well as the “dynamic” perspective of how leveraging IC assets can be enabled by systematic managerial activities, the paper combines the key issues in IC and KM literatures and demonstrates how intangible resources should be managed to produce value. The authors are not aware of any previous studies explicitly combining and distinguishing IC and KM fields to this extent. The paper therefore contributes to the literature on knowledge-based issues in organizations at large and potentially offers a theoretical grounding for many empirical and theoretical future studies.

This introduction paper to the special issue on “Managing intellectual capital dimensions for organizational value creation” aims to focus on the relationships between intellectual capital (IC), innovation, performance improvement and competitive advantage in private and public organizations. The purpose of this paper is to review and underline some relevant theoretical pillars and contribute to the ongoing debate on how knowledge assets may impact organizational performance and innovation dynamics.

The paper is based on a deep analysis of the managerial literature addressing the nature, the role and the relevance of the IC dimensions for organizational value creation. The conceptual background sets the foundations for a better understanding of the strategic importance of knowledge-based value drivers for innovation and sustainable competitive advantage.

This paper provides a framework summarizing the key assumptions at the basis of a better understanding the strategic relevance of the knowledge-based value drivers for competitiveness.

The value of this paper is the definition of a conceptual framework outlining the relationships between IC management, innovation, performance improvement and value creation capacity.

This study examines the trust-repair practices after organizational change.

Previous research on this topic is limited, so an abductive qualitative research approach was adopted. The data were collected from key informants through focus group discussions and interviews.

Beyond previous research findings, this study identified that employee trust can be repaired after benevolence-based trust violations by enforcing ethical behavior and fostering managers' emotional intelligence and after competence-based violations by fostering the sense-making process and by involving third parties in trust recovery. In addition, transparent information sharing and strong management actions predict positive trust outcomes in a change context.

This paper makes three key contributions to the literature on organizational trust by (1) identifying trust violations after organizational change, (2) proposing a process model on trust repair and (3) extending understanding of trust repair practices by revealing new elements.

This study provides practical information from a real work context and can improve managers' understanding of active trust-repair practices.

This paper outlines active trust-repair practices in an organizational change context and expands the current theory by presenting novel insights into organizational trust repair. In addition, this paper contributes to the trust-repair literature by proposing promising avenues for future trust repair research.