Mapping intellectual resources: insights from critical modernism

A consensus is emerging that the key to competitive success is becoming the ability to create, leverage, maintain and develop specialised knowledge, competencies and intellectual resources. However, little is actually known about the creation, management, utilisation and valuation of such resources. Although a concept such as intellectual capital cannot be precisely defined, this should not prevent us from employing it in an era where the intangible is rapidly assuming economic, social and psychological supremacy over the tangible. Moving beyond objectivist and purely systems theoretic approaches, our point of departure in exploring this emergent dynamic, with implications for people management and accountancy, is the set of symmetric and reciprocal relations presupposed in Habermas’ concept of communicative action.