Study On The Relationship Between Intellectual Capital And Corporate Value

In the era of knowledge-based economy, it is widely recognized that knowledge has become the most important factor for a company's development. The rapid development and value enhancement of enterprises, especially the high-tech enterprises, largely depend on such as knowledge, innovation and other intangible resources. Comparing with the physical resources, intellectual capital(IC) reflecting the knowledge, innovation and other intangible resources in the enterprises, plays an increasingly important role in value creation. In the 21st century, intellectual capital is considered to be the source and core of enterprise value and the key to enhance the core competitiveness. Therefore, how to give full play to the value creation role of IC and how to help corporates maintain competitive advantage and enhance their corporate value and performance have become an urgent issue worthy to do further research. In the context of China's emerging capital market, using the high-tech companies and traditional manufacturing companies as sample. In order to make the research more precise, comprehensive and innovative, following the core concept of intellectual capita and the relationship between intellectual capital and corporate value within the complex context, three parts of research work are conducted.First of all, based on the review of the existing researches, a clear intellectual capital concept and re-classification of its elements are given. According to the former definition, the IC research can be divided into four schools:accounting, strategic management, knowledge management and value chain. Drawing on the various genres of academic scholars on IC definition and further analyzing the essence and function of "knowledge" and "value creation". From the perspective of knowledge and value movement, intellectual capital is defined as "corporate knowledge and knowledge creation which can be transformed into corporate economic value and social value, including the whole process of knowledge value creation, value enhancement and value achievement". Although intellectual capital is intangible and immaterial, from the definition aspect, its elements are always attached to a certain entity. So we choose entity-relationship theory to re-classify the IC elements. By summing up and evaluating the existed models and according to the characteristics of knowledge creation process, this dissertation put knowledge value chain as the study foundation, which can better reflect the knowledge value creation process, conversion, transfer and innovation. Through analyzing the critical knowledge value chain and the physical performance, intellectual capital will be re-classified to four elements:human capital, innovation capital, process capital and customer capital.Second, basing on the knowledge value creation, this paper builds an intrinsic value creation model of IC elements to reveal the process and paths of IC value creation. Dynamic capabilities theory holds that the value creation of IC is a process, in which different IC elements play different role. In order to create value IC elements should interact and combine with each other. In order to explore the value creation mechanism of IC elements, this dissertation deeply analyzes the process of knowledge value creation based on the knowledge value chain theory. Knowledge value chain theory believes that knowledge is the wealth of an organization. It can be accumulated with the growth of organization and then creates value in continuous movement. Knowledge creates value, which presents on the one hand knowledge accumulation, on the other hand the knowledge creation, sharing and application. Correspondingly, in the value chain, it presents the creation, enhancement and implementation of knowledge value. According to the above analysis, we propose that in the value creation process:human capital is the source of value creation, process and innovation capital can enhance can leverage the capability of knowledge value creation, and customer capital can help to achieve knowledge value creation, which reveals the IC intrinsic value creation mechanism.Third, we build and verify a dynamic moderating effects model, which can reflect the contextual factors impact on the relationship between IC and corporate value. Basing on the RBV and knowledge based view and the existing theoretical and empirical findings, we propose that human capital, innovation capital, process capital and customer capital are the key value drivers of business. Contingency theory and dynamic capabilities theory suggest that the internal and external situational factors have an impact on the value creation and achievement. Learning theory deems that the influence of the IC investment to enterprises' value have a certain time interval (time lagged). Based on the above considerations, we have built a dynamic moderating effects model which reflects the impact of the internal and external situational factors, which consisted of environment, industry characteristics, organization size, corporate life cycle, and slack resources, on the relationships between IC and corporate value. We built the research hypotheses and moderating theoretical model.In this paper, we choose Chinese high-tech listed companies as samples, use the multi-channel secondary data, and analyze the assumptions and model in an empirical way. The main conclusions drawn are as follows:(1) IC is indeed a key driver of the intrinsic value and it can significantly enhance companies'future profitability. Innovation capital significantly improves the hidden value of enterprises. However, the process capital significantly eroded the hidden value. (2) Environment factors not only significantly affect the corporate value, but also moderate the relationship between IC and corporate value. Environment munificence moderates negatively the relationship between human capital and corporate value, but moderates positively the relationship innovation capital and process capital and corporate value. Environment dynamism moderates negatively the relationship between process capital and corporate value. (3) High-tech industry more depends on intellectual capital to create and achieve value creation comparing with traditional manufacturing industry. Although the traditional manufacturing industries pay attention on the innovation capital, they still largely rely on the physical capital to create value. The firm's size has a significant influence on the relation between IC and corporate value. (4) In the different enterprises life cycle, IC plays a different role. In the maturity period, the impact of IC on corporate value in general is the largest. Human capital in the growth stage and customer capital in the mature stage have the largest impact on corporate value. Innovation capital always has a positive effect on the hidden value of a company in its whole life cycle. (5) Slack resources will not only enhance corporate value, but also significantly improve the IC impact to enterprise value. So enterprises should pay more attention to its management and application. From theoretical and empirical results, the results support the view that intellectual capital is the key driver of the intrinsic value in a company. And they also support that in different contexts enterprises should adopt different IC investment, management strategies to enhance enterprises value and maintain their competitive advantage.