Intellectual capital reporting : An explorative and explanative study of how universities in Sweden report on IC information

Abstract: In society, intellectual capital (IC) is considered to be necessary in order to create value in organizations. The interest has expanded from private to public organizations such as universities. However, there is still a relatively small amount of research about IC reporting in universities, despite the importance of IC in universities. Previous research does not either consider different university characteristics, something that can help in the development of a common framework for IC reporting. The purpose with this study is to explore and explain howdifferent universities report on IC information in their annual reports in regard to the characteristics size, maturity, type of institution and governmental dependence. The purpose was reached through a multiple case study of eight Swedish universities and a content analysis. The theoretical model was developed through resource based view, knowledge based view, institutional diversity and signaling theory and suggest that internal and external pressures affects the usage of IC assets, strategies and intentions with IC reporting. The results show that all universities report on IC information, to different extent. Relational capital and human capital was the types of IC reported on the most which can be explained by its close connection to the individual, compared to structural capital. The results did not show differences in the IC reporting regarding the different characteristics. However, a contribution of the thesis was the results regarding the IC reporting being integrated in different sections of the annual report, as a part of both strategies and historical performance.