Accounting, empirical measurement and intellectual capital

The application of proper measurement to a company generating products, services, cash flow and reputation largely from intellectual capital (IC) assets is examined. The particular focus is to measure the organisation so that the contributions of intangibles to the business are measured in their own right. If the measurements are feasible in practice (they are), they will render the tangible as well as the intangible assets of a company to be managed explicitly. Then the contributions of the intangibles to cash flow become measurable, and thence on to estimates of business value, and shareholder value. Shows that the process view of an organisation deconstructs the “classical” structure of IC categories and formulations, and rearranges them in a form whose state and process variables are observable, measurable, and properly dimensioned for a multidimensional measuring space. Ends with a demonstration of the method applied to a hotel organisation that exemplifies many of the problems of measuring and optimising IC assets.