The Creation and Deterioration of Intellectual Capital in a Meta-Organisation

This paper addresses a gap in the literature concerning the creation and deterioration of IC in complex network systems, namely those with characteristics of what we named "meta-organisations". As far as the authors are aware, most of the research in IC has been focused on individual firms. Although there has been an effort to apply the traditional IC methodologies to a bigger scope, a review of the literature on IC, in particular the one devoted to the analysis of macro level units, such as regions, clusters or networks, allowed us to identify empirical contexts thus far unexplored, such as the case of seaports. We consider seaports to be very interesting grounds for our study, because they are themselves organisations (complex network systems) providing a "collective service". Accordingly, there is a high degree of dependency between the interrelated and collaborating members, which strive for common objectives, in order to create value for them, for the network, and for the final consumer. Network goals achievement depends on how well coordinated as a single unit are all operators in the system. In addition, there is a paucity of management sciences' research on to maritime transportation and seaports. With this paper we intend to discuss how the meta-organisation's IC is created or destroyed as a consequence of its members' actions and their capacity to create, employ and circulate knowledge. In the discussion we provide illustrations about these processes. Individual actions aimed at increasing each of the collaborating firms IC can, not only create "collective" Intellectual assets, but it can also lead to an intellectual liability for the network. We also suggest and provide supporting evidence that the whole (collective intellectual capital) is different from the sum of its parts (members' IC). Evidence presented in this paper results from the preliminary interviews conducted as part of a case study on IC creation and deterioration in a seaport. Findings can have very important strategic and managerial implications for the seaport and its stakeholders, who are concerned with the performance of the whole network.