The Level of Intellectual Capital Management in Slovak Companies

The paper provides qualitative research based evidence on the management of different areas of intellectual capital in Slovak companies during 2013 aiming to evaluate the management style of Slovak companies regarding building their future competitive advantage through the investments into intangible resources. The concept of intellectual capital presents a comprehensive insight into different areas that are essential for the organization and its performance management. Over the past years, several methods have been developed to measure the intellectual capital of an organization. Through so called scorecard methods, various components of intangible assets or intellectual capital are identified and indicators and indices are generated and reported in scorecards or as graphs. They might be very useful at a company level as a basis for internal management information, especially in the connection with business strategy management. Although scorecard intellectual capital measurement methods are operating with indicators and calculations at business level what results in worse inter-company comparability, it is possible to watch and generalize some common trends. In our research, we investigate the level of management of different areas of intellectual capital by analyzing three different dimensions: perceived importance of individual parts of intangible resources in terms of achieving the objectives of the company, implemented knowledge management initiatives that contribute to build these resources and the management style of Slovak top managers (their focus on activities reducing company costs vs. activities building the future sustainable competitive advantage through investing into intangible resources). The research has been conducted within Slovak companies using face-to-face interviews with company owners, company directors or members of top management. The sample consists of 56 companies based in Slovak republic, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs).