Intellectual Capital Dynamics: Accounting for Time

Purpose - Moving from the call for more qualitative research useful to capture the experience and construction of time in work organizations (Ezzamel and Robson, 1995; Hassard, 1996) and for case studies on Intellectual Capital (Marr and Chatzkel, 2004), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role time plays in understanding Intellectual Capital dynamicity. The argument of this paper is that analyzing IC with a temporal lens allows to visualize diffent kinds of dynamicity which have to be considered to measure and understand IC. Design/methodology/approach - This study is based on an action research case study. In particular, a modest interventionist method has been adopted to investigate Alpha. Originality/value - This methodology puts in evidence that time is relevant in order to understand Intellectual Capital in vivo and highlights the problems that its dynamicity can arise. Previous studies regarding time and Intellectual Capital are very limited and not based on this methodology which allows to combine theoretical results with practical relevance. Practical implications - The outcomes of the application are the following. First this study incentives to include time into Intellectual Capital Accounting systems. Second, it proposes some methods useful to account for Intellectual Capital timing, i.e. hard data and perceptions.