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Building the intangible cube

In 2012 we live in the Era of the Intangible. Organizations have to rely more on Intangible Assets (IAs) than on tangible ones to prosper and even to survive. However, there is a big confusion in scholars and in practitioners regarding the analysis of IAs. This confusion is originated, we believe, because IAs are currently being analysed in too many different perspectives. And honestly, we think we all lack a broad and background perspective on all those analyses. It is that background the "Intangible Cube" we present provides. The research question of this paper is: By how many perspectives can we currently analyse the IAs (part 1 of the question), and how can we check if one perspective is more important than the other (part 2)? In this context, we define six dimensions by which we consider IAs can be addressed. Knowledge Management refers to IA and its consequences in the Knowledge cycle*Intellectual Capital refers to IAs as mainly the knowledge-based economic value, divided into Human Capital, Relational Capital and Structural Capital*Human Resource Development refers to IAs as organizational learning*Economics deals with the micro and macroeconomic consequences of IAs and with the market of IAs*by Social Policy we mean IAs investment considered as a commodity which have social benefits and which are managed by social operators*and finally the Management and Accountability, where we address the quite old fashioned view according to which IAs are strategic resources that must be accounted for and valued for money. The remaining question is: do organizations value them equally? We define and justify the six perspectives (addressing the first part of the question). We also outline some examples of questions which will form a questionnaire we expect to conduct in 2012/13. The outcomes will provide the interest attributed by organizations to each perspective. Finally, we will compare that position with the expected one, to reach some key questions about why intangibles still are not widespread. We believe this paper addresses a new and decisive area in the field of intangible analysis, and of course in KM.

Eduardo Tomé

Miguel Gonzalez-Loureiro

Publication
Conference Name:
Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Knowledge Management, ECKM 2012
Year of Publication:
2012
Tomé, E., & Gonzalez-Loureiro, M. (2012). Building the intangible cube. In Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Knowledge Management, ECKM 2012.
Identifiers
ISBN Number:
9781908272638
Other Numbers:
2-s2.0-84871141773
Locators
Alternative titles