A RETROSPECTIVE OF EVALUATION MODELS ON INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

In the classical theory of economics, capital is one of the three factors of production, in addition to land and labor, and refers in particular to buildings, equipment, and machinery etc., used for the production of other goods (the term physical capital is also used by the specialized literature) (Brãtianu & Jianu, 2006). The present study intend to bring to the forefront the main evalluation methods for intellectual capital, as proposed, supported and criticized at the same time by researchers and practitioners. The study offers response to the following research questions: Which are the advantages and disadvantages of the intellectual capital evaluation methods? And what are the main studies approaching the subject of intellectual capital evaluation at international level? The collection and analysis of intellectual capital evaluation models and the non-participative observation are the main instruments used to bring to the forefront the main international existing evaluation frameworks. The information sources representing the base for these researches are especially constituted by articles published in specialized magazines, both from accounting and economics fields, specialized works relevant to the reference field, legislative documents, official documents, press releases and other documents issued by various national and international bodies. The most representative studies bringing to the forefront the evaluation of intellectual capital are the ones elaborated by Mouritsen et al (Mouritsen et al, 2001), Manea and Gorgan (Manea and Gorgan, 2003), Tayles (Tayles, 2002), Tayles et al (Tayles et al, 2007). The presented approaches offer a general idea on the range of methods, disciplines and operational specializations existing for the evaluation of intellectual capital. Only one of them - Balanced Scorecard - is largely used, while the rest of the methods remain too theoretical or too poorly developed to be universally accepted. We believe that the efforts from the regulation and standardization bodies in the view of intellectual capital evaluation are too small, despite the fact that community shows an increased interest in this sense, many companies being tempted to build their own system of evaluating performances with regards to intellectual capital.intellectual capital, evaluation models, companies, Balanced Scorecard, international level

A RETROSPECTIVE OF EVALUATION MODELS ON INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

In the classical theory of economics, capital is one of the three factors of production, in addition to land and labor, and refers in particular to buildings, equipment, and machinery etc., used for the production of other goods (the term physical capital is also used by the specialized literature) (Bratianu and Jianu, 2006). The present study intend to bring to the forefront the main evalluation methods for intellectual capital, as proposed, supported and criticized at the same time by researchers and practitioners. The study offers response to the following research questions: Which are the advantages and disadvantages of the intellectual capital evaluation methods? And what are the main studies approaching the subject of intellectual capital evaluation at international level? The collection and analysis of intellectual capital evaluation models and the non-participative observation are the main instruments used to bring to the forefront the main international existing evaluation frameworks. The information sources representing the base for these researches are especially constituted by articles published in specialized magazines, both from accounting and economics fields, specialized works relevant to the reference field, legislative documents, official documents, press releases and other documents issued by various national and international bodies. The most representative studies bringing to the forefront the evaluation of intellectual capital are the ones elaborated by Mouritsen et al (Mouritsen et al, 2001), Manea and Gorgan (Manea and Gorgan, 2003), Tayles (Tayles, 2002), Tayles et al (Tayles et al, 2007). The presented approaches offer a general idea on the range of methods, disciplines and operational specializations existing for the evaluation of intellectual capital. Only one of them - Balanced Scorecard is largely used, while the rest of the methods remain too theoretical or too poorly developed to be universally accepted. We believe that the efforts from the regulation and standardization bodies in the view of intellectual capital evaluation are too small, despite the fact that community shows an increased interest in this sense, many companies being tempted to build their own system of evaluating performances with regards to intellectual capital

A RETROSPECTIVE OF EVALUATION MODELS ON INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

In the classical theory of economics, capital is one of the three factors of production, in addition to , Manea and Gorgan (Manea and Gorgan, 2003), Tayles (Tayles, 2002), Tayles et al (Tayles et al, 200

A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

The term intellectual capital has been appeared recently in economy being debated in literature since 90s playing an important role in the economic activity of an entity of nowadays. The emerging of the "new economyâ€, mainly driven by information and knowledge, has been identified by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development as the explanation lying at the base of the development of intellectual capital, a fundamental topic in business (Hornery, 1999). One way or another, intellectual capital plays a significant role in the economic, administrative, technological and social development of contemporary times, being difficult to quantify. Many researchers avoid defining intellectual capital, but consider it the basic value of an entity, as it contains non-financial and related information (Amir and Lev, 1996; Edvinsson and Malone, 1997; Stewart, 1997; Bontis, 2001). The purpose of our paper is to highlights the contributions of researchers in the field of intellectual capital as far as the published articles in the high quality journals are concerned. Our paper presents a quantitative research by performing, on one side, a content analysis of the prestigious international journals which include papers related to intellectual capital and, on the other side, a content analysis of those articles. The originality of the present article is represented by the personal contribution to the stage of knowledge in the field of intellectual capital by means of analyzing already existent researches in the field. The results of our analysis, demonstrate that the studies conducted until now are very few by comparison to the number it should have existed until now in the literature, which demonstrates that this field of research is still at its early stage

Environmental Reporting and Good Practice of Corporate Governance: Petroleum Industry Case Study

AbstractBecause environmental reporting remains voluntary on an international level, there are major differences in terms of the quality and quantity of environmental information, reported by entities from varied industries and countries. Starting from the agency theory, the company is accountable for the decision to report environmental information, decision which is made by the management to serve for the best interest of the shareholders (Buniamin et al., 2011: 56). Within this study, we would therefore focus on certain factors related to the entity's internal characteristics, consisting mainly in how the entity is managed, in order to identify if good corporate governance practices explain the voluntary environmental reporting. The research is conducted as an empirical study which explains how the disclosure of environmental information varies across the largest entities operating in the petroleum industry and reflects factors that could account for these variations. The paper identifies the corporate governance characteristics such as the percentage of independent directors and the existence of an environmental committee as factors that explain the variation in environmental information disclosure. We conclude that in order to secure the transparency of environmental performance within a company, the board should ensure a sufficiently number of independent members able to exercise an independent reasoning for solving potential conflicts of interests. Also, the environmental committee monitors the company's activity in terms of its environmental impact, bringing about increasing transparency regarding the environmental aspects. We can therefore consider that implementing good corporate governance practices by establishing environmental, safety or responsibility committees that monitor the environmental impact of the company and introducing a sufficient numbers of directors ensuring transparency and objectivity can solve the agency's theory conflict and determine companies to report more voluntary information regarding their environmental performance and other aspects. The paper contributes to an understanding of the correlations between corporate governance practices and voluntary environmental reporting