Search results

Education promotes the development of human capital, which has long been studied in the literature as a key determinant of economic development. Education is today listed as key part of public intangible capital and is further studied in the context of new growth determinants. This chapter extends the analysis of the contribution of education as a public intangible capital to the economic growth. It shows that education in fact promotes all three components of sustainable development. First, education promotes economic development and higher value-added creation, second, it is related to better and more job opportunities, higher wages, promotes health, etc., and consequently contributes to the achievement of the “social” dimension of sustainable development. Last, more educated population is also more prone toward supporting environmental goals. Therefore, investment into education is very important from the perspective of sustainable development. With offering a range of opportunities to individuals, the role of public education and policy-making in the field is essential to promote sustainable development from this perspective.

The current era of globalization is dominated by the rise of investments in intangible capital rather than tangible capital – the ascendance of creativity over plant and equipment. This brief paper is motivated by the possibility that emerging market economies such as Morocco might take greater advantage of new tools and policies designed for this new era. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To begin, the author discusses the transformation of the global economy and the consequences of the transformed global economy for economic thinking and measurement. The author refers to both old and new literature on the measurement of intangible investment and capital.

Then, the author discusses the rising role of creativity and cultural difference in the development of these new economic forces, using the example of the Harry Potter book series.

The author then considers how cultural enhancement serves multiple purposes for a nation. Finally, the author turns to some of the possible implications of these economic forces for Morocco, stressing that these implications are speculative.

This paper aims to revisit the relationship between intangible capital and labour productivity growth using the largest, up-to-date macro database (2000–2015) available to corroborate the econometric findings of earlier work and to generate novel econometric evidence by accounting for times of crisis (2008–2013) and economic recovery (2014–2015).

To achieve these aims, this paper employs a cross-country growth accounting econometric estimation approach using the largest, up-to-date database available encompassing 16 EU countries over the period 2000–2015. The paper accounts for times of crisis (2008–2013) and of economic recovery (2014–2015). It separately estimates the contribution of three distinct dimensions of intangible capital: (1) computerized information, (2) innovative property and (3) economic competencies.

First, when accounting for intangibles, the paper finds that these intangibles have become the dominant source of labour productivity growth in the EU, explaining up to 66 percent of growth. Second, when accounting for times of crisis (2008–2013), in contrast to tangible capital, the paper detects a solid positive relationship between intangibles and labour productivity growth. Third, when accounting for the economic recovery (2014–2015), the paper finds a highly significant and remarkably strong relationship between intangible capital and labour productivity growth.

This paper corroborates the importance of intangibles for labour productivity growth and thereby underlines the necessity to incorporate intangibles into today's national accounting frameworks in order to correctly depict the levels of capital investment being made in European economies. These levels are significantly higher than those currently reflected in the official statistics.

There is a rising interest in ethical, moral, and spiritual challenges and imperatives, accountabilities, and responsibilities in the corporation. Governance issues arise whenever a corporate entity assumes a life of its own, and the ownership of an enterprise is separated from its management. How could owners ensure that “professional managers” hired and delegated to run their companies would run the venture to protect owners’ interests? What is and should be the moral quality of the corporation that CEOs govern? What types of corporate governance, ownership, and control modes and models should CEOs adopt such that they ensure long-term objectives of all stakeholders of the corporation? These ethical questions are central issues in the world of corporations today battled as they are with various pressures from governments, Wall Street analysts, credit ratings agencies, banks and promoters, private equity and hedge funds, and hostile takeovers. Such questions will always be crucial when fiduciary rights and duties attached to investment and ownership cannot be applied directly. This is the context of today’s corporate governance that this Epilogue to Volume I explores.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to provide assistance to public organizations in the process of developing their ability to identify, measure and manage their intangible assets.

A review of the most important intellectual capital management initiatives at Spanish public organizations is realized.

The paper shows the importance of intellectual capital approaches as instruments to face the new challenges in public sector. The experience gained from the case studies provides a practical help to public organizations to develop means to identify, measure and manage their intangible assets.

The study provides a basis to understand how Spanish public organizations are measuring and managing their intellectual capital. In this sense, the first step would be the definition and diffusion of the organization's strategic objectives. Then, critical intangibles related to these objectives should be identified. Afterwards, a set of indicators is defined and developed for each intangible.

Public managers work with intangible concepts, although there is not always a methodology available that systematizes their identification, measurement and presentation. To deal with this problem, it is considered fundamental to know which initiatives have been carried out in Spain in relation to models of intellectual capital management for public organizations.

This paper aims to explore how fund managers (FMs) deal with major problems of ignorance and uncertainty in stock selection and in asset allocation decisions.

Interviews were conducted with 40 fund managers in the period October 1997 to January 2000. A seven stage approach was adopted to sift through and process the large volumes of case data. The interview case data formed the basis for identifying common patterns and themes across the cases.

The case data revealed the nature of this private information agenda concerning intellectual capital or intangibles and the dynamic connections between these variables in the value creation process. The case data provided insight into how the book value and market value gap arose and the special role of information on intangibles and intellectual capital in valuing the company.

The fund management behaviour has important implications for regulatory policy issues on insider information, on corporate disclosure, the corporate governance role of financial institutions, and for the governance of financial institutions.

The paper focuses on issues of importance in an increasingly concentrated and global FM industry.