INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL INVESTMENTS: ANALYSIS OF THE PREDICTED OUTCOMES

Purpose of the article The paper aimed to reflect the results of the survey "Intellectual Capital Investments in Latvia" that was conducted in March - October 2015. The overwhelming research goals were (1) to evaluate Latvian entrepreneurs' understanding about the concept of intellectual capital investments, and (2) to define factors affecting the level of intellectual capital investments in the Latvian business environment. Methodology/methods The survey among 203 respondents, representing different sectors of Latvian economy, was conducted, using the questionnaire specially designed for research purposes. Latvian entrepreneurs were offered to evaluate the pre-formulated outcomes from IC investments in according to their subjective perceived importance of each, using 4-point scale. The received data was processed, applying such methods, as analysis of means, ranking and principal components analysis (PCA), in SPSS 19.0 environment. Scientific aim Scientific aim of the paper is to fill the gap in literature regarding the concept of intellectual capital investments. Despite the huge number of IC-related papers, the term "intellectual capital investments" is not so popular among the researchers. In the given paper the authors focused on predicted outcomes from intellectual capital investments and on the importance of these outcomes, perceived by the surveyed Latvian entrepreneurs. Findings Profit growth was evaluated by Latvian entrepreneurs as the most important predicted outcome from IC investments. However, customer satisfaction was also rated among the important ones. The PCA yielded four components, namely intangible outcomes, financials, efficiency and employees value. Conclusions Despite the fact that financial outcome was prioritised, non-financial outcomes were also highly rated by most of respondents. Considering that research sample was limited by the number of respondents and represented sectors, the survey could be iterated in another business environment. Besides, the revealed components could involve more predetermined items to test the reliability of the received results.