Proposal of Indicators for Reporting on Intellectual Capital in Universities

There is a growing interest in applying an intellectual capital approach in universities, since knowledge is the main output and input of these institutions. Universities produce knowledge, either through technical and scientific research (the results of investigation, publications, etc.) or through teaching (students trained and productive relationships with their stakeholders). Their most valuable resources also include their teachers, researchers, administration and service staff, university governors and students, with all their organisational relationships and routines. Furthermore, necessities like the increasing stakeholder demand for greater transparency, the increasing competition between universities and firms, and greater autonomy, push universities towards the adoption of new reporting systems which should necessarily incorporate intangibles. This paper has two purposes: to determine the extent to which university stakeholders are interested in having information relating to the intellectual capital; and to propose a battery of indicators for measuring and reporting intellectual capital in Spanish universities. In this study we developed a questionnaire which was sent to members of the Social Councils of Spanish public universities in order to identify which intangible elements university stakeholders demand most. Our study's results served as basis to develop a battery of indicators which allows these intangible elements to be measured. The results of our empirical study show that the respondents consider it essential that universities provide information on intellectual capital. These results allow us to recommend extending the limits of universities' financial statements so as to include the information on different intangible elements demanded by the different stakeholders. Furthermore, our proposal is an attempt at the standardization of indicators for measuring and reporting the universities' intellectual capital. Our proposal of indicators aims to provide guidelines to help universities on the path to presenting information which is useful to their stakeholders, contributing to a greater transparency, accountability and comparability in the higher education sector.