Trying to improve and harmonise intellectual capital reporting for companies: a theoretical framework

The emergence of the new technological economy mainly driven by information and knowledge is connected with the development of intellectual capital. But how could companies improve their financial and non-financial reporting information about intellectual capital without having a real framework of intellectual capital? The purpose of this paper is to analyse the conceptualisation of intellectual capital within literature and construct a theoretical framework. In this paper, we review and analyse the conceptualisation of intellectual capital within literature from the early 1970s through 2012 in order to trace the evolution of the intellectual capital concept and to develop a theoretical framework which could be employed as a theoretical foundation for future empirical studies related to intellectual capital researches and also for companies to improve and harmonise the reporting of intellectual capital. The framework includes the following types of values: 1) native and acquired (human capital); 2) values related to organisational infrastructure and values related to intellectual property (structural capital); 3) values related to business and to benefices (relational capital).