The Link Between Learning Capability and Business Performance in MNEs

It is widely recognized that the development of learning capability is key to achieve a durable competitive advantage. This is especially true in the context of MNEs. When MNEs operate in disparate host countries, they enhance their knowledge bases, capabilities, and competitiveness through learning processes. The analysis of the relevance of learning capability to improve business performance and, thus, the organizational competence has been an important issue developed in literature. This chapter explains the link between learning capability and the improvement of business performance by comparing how the main dimensions of learning capability –knowledge resources and learning processesimpacts on performance, in terms of both non-financial and financial performance. It is argued that those MNEs with the highest levels in both their knowledge resources and learning processes obtain a superior performance.

Building and Maintaining Human Capital with Learning Management Systems

In this chapter, the authors examine how building, integrating and maintaining human capital with Learning Management Systems acts as an enabler for the management if intellectual capital within multinational organizations. They draw upon learning theory and training practices to demonstrate that human capital is best viewed through a competence lens; that is, accounting for human capital should focus on matters of individual and organizational competence, and that the development of human capital is, in essence, an exercise in competence development, which involves training and learning. This, then, is this chapter’s point of departure in understanding how IT-based systems can enable training and foster learning, thereby building an organization’s human capital.

Knowledge Management and the Links to Human Capital Management

This paper explores various linkages between knowledge management (KM) and human capital management (HCM) in the context of developing leadership and management capabilities to support sustainability. Based on the prevailing literature, a framework linking human resource management (HRM), KM and HCM is applied to the development of leadership and management capabilities to support sustainability. The framework identifies ways to promote sustainability through creating effective links between KM and HCM by which organizations can develop their leadership and management capabilities to support sustainability across business, environmental and social justice contexts. This approach provides managers with a framework for addressing sustainability issues and for developing individual and organizational capabilities to support sustainability through KM and HCM practices.

An Overview of International Intellectual Capital (IC) Models and Applicable Guidelines

In line with the increasing importance of the intangible economy within the last few years, a higher number of models have been published. In this sense, the authors main original contribution when measuring Intellectual Capital is related to comparing and assessing the different existent Guidelines, unlike previous published papers.The purpose of this chapter is to present and compare some of the most recent and significant contributions from researchers to the field of the measurement and management of intangibles.

A Knowledge Management Framework to Manage Intellectual Capital for Corporate Sustainability

The significant development in knowledge management (KM) literature in recent years is a reflection of the growing interest to academics and practitioners/consultants involved in organisational change and business transformation. Knowledge is a major source of competitive advantage and knowledge assets/intellectual capital has to be managed effectively. The importance of implementing a knowledge management strategy to understand the relationship between physical and intellectual capital, to increase the market value of organisations and achieve corporate sustainability is examined. Using case studies of construction organisations and applying the STEPS knowledge management framework, it was found that there is a greater need for multinational organisations to implement KM. This is because they have knowledge that is diverse and geographically dispersed across a network of organisations. It is concluded that knowledge management has a catalytic role in developing intellectual capital to achieve corporate sustainability. The STEPS framework will enable multinational organisations to identify the reform, resource implications and the results of KM activities.

Dynamic Capabilities in R&D-Networks

This chapter addresses collaborative business networks at the level of industry/cluster networks, which is important and relevant from the strategic management perspective in several industries. Collaborative networks are seen to offer firms collective benefits beyond those of a single firm or market transaction. The author of this chapter aims to contribute to the development of theories of knowledge management, organizational learning and a resource-based view of the firm. The initial argument is that the characteristics of the task that organizations try to accomplish through forming a specific collaborative network influence the organization’s intellectual capital, the capabilities developed and required. This chapter is based on a longitudinal case study in the ICT-sector.

Intellectual Capital Management in Long-Lasting Family Firms

How to acknowledge, manage and measure intangible strategic resources embedded in organizational settings—such as intellectual capital—has been a widely discussed topic during the last two decades. However, when referring to unique organizational forms such as family-owned or controlled firms, the topic is understudied. Considering that approximately one third of S&P 500 are family-controlled firms— i.e. DuPont—, which have survived beyond a lifetime, the author asks herself how these long-lasting family businesses managed to balance the strategic and parallel creation, development and use of their intellectual capital both at the family and business levels in order to support growth and regeneration. She introduces the ICFB-Family Wealth matrix in order to describe our findings.

National Intellectual Capital Stocks and Organizational Cultures

Using a set of macro-level socio-economic indicators, we first explore whether two Middle Eastern countries (Lebanon and Iran) provide the foundation for organizations to develop their intellectual capital (IC). Then, we investigate the role of micro-level organizational characteristics that might support or hinder the development of IC management processes within organizations. The insight gained through our comparison will shed light on some important organizational attributes that foster the management of IC for wealth creation. The analysis has important implications for multinational corporations (MNCs) that have operations in the Middle East, are contemplating business involvement in the Middle East, or that have employees with Middle Eastern origin.

Intellectual Capital Measurements and Reporting

Multinational organizations operate across a variety of complex competitive environments. Achieving the right balance of global alignment and local flexibility is central to competitive success for these organizations. Viewed from an intellectual capital perspective, multinational organizations need to: design and execute appropriate structures and systems (structural capital); engage and align its international workforce (human capital); and, generate favourable relationships across the multitude of stakeholders it interacts with globally (relational capital). But in pursuing these goals, a number of issues and challenges are faced: How to make sense of intellectual capital investment decisions? How are they to communicate intellectual capital priorities throughout the multinational business? And, with what tools are they to measure and monitor investments and initiatives such that refinements and corrective action can be made? In dealing with these issues, intellectual capital measurement and reporting practices can help. This chapter presents the conceptual framework underpinning intellectual capital, discusses limitations with traditional financial reporting models, outlines the benefits of intellectual measurement, and reports and presents research on the perspective of finance professionals evaluating global companies.

An Epistemology of Intellectual Capital and its Transition to a Practical Application

Organization requirements for survival evolve reflective of the environment in which they exist. It has been theorized the organizational tool for survival of the 21st century is intellectual capital. As with new concepts the transition from theory to practical implementation is not without challenges. Intellectual capital struggles with transitioning into the world of business. This chapter includes a limited study of organizations in the Midwestern United States whose executives espouse a valuation of their organizations’ intellectual capital but have not bridged the gap from the theoretical understanding of intellectual capital to the practical documentation of their organizational intellectual capital in practice. This finding illustrates an estrangement between the academic field of theory and the practical implementation in the organizations.