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There is a traditional discrepancy in the specialized literature on how the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) should be understood. Additionally, there is a further situation, which in our opinion is also contradictory; many organisations are developing CSR projects; on the other hand, there is a proliferation of news on these organizations that lead us to question what the true extent of their commitment to CSR is. To that purpose, we have developed a case study that has allowed us to verify that one of the most active organisations in Spain in terms of the CSR adopted is using it basically as a marketing instrument, since it is using its at least formal compliance with institutional rules in order to increase its legitimacy in front of its main stakeholders.

For better mapping the path of intellectual capital (IC) research, the purpose of this paper is to selectively review empirical studies of IC published, and identify theories, components and three dimensions of analysis: national IC (NIC), regional IC (RIC) and organizational IC (OIC).

The systematic literature review (SLR) subject to analysis is based on empirical studies made between 1960 and 2016, and focuses on three dimensions of analysis: NIC, RIC and OIC. Four research questions were designed, using the following databases, namely, Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, for data collection purposes.

The SLR unveils a multidimensional taxonomy for measuring and classifying the type of IC applicable to the different levels of analysis and provides some recommendations for future studies of NIC, RIC and OIC, by outlining the need for clear definitions of components and measures of IC and identifying strengths, limitations and future research avenues.

In order to fill the gap found in the literature and the non-existence of a study clarifying the multiple dimensions of analysis of IC, this SLR makes a twofold, original contribution to the literature on management: providing an SLR of the main empirical studies dealing with different units of analysis; and identifying a multidimensional taxonomy for measuring and classifying the type of IC applicable to the different levels of analysis.