| Rapid technological advancement, deregulations, extended product lines, and globalization are forcing firms to go through the agonizing process of reinventing themselves; they must develop new advantages while undermining the strategic advantages of their competitors within an increasingly intense competitive environment. These trends have led to a growing recognition of the significance of intellectual capital (IC) in creating and sustaining competitive advantages.; As firms respond to these critical global phenomena, the fundamental issue lies in identifying the vital components of IC to leverage. All firms in general, and high tech firms in particular, are compelled to focus more on knowledge intensity or IC as the primary determinant of sustainable competitive performance. In essence, every firm houses valuable intellectual material; however, it is strategically important to identify the vital areas to leverage in order to gain a competitive advantage.; The principal purpose of this thesis is to help sharpen the understanding of IC theory by exploring the components of intellectual capital as well as the underlying assumptions. This thesis investigates the effect of IC on venture performance. While IC is expected to have a direct impact on venture performance, it is anticipated that this relationship will have a time lag. Moreover, this relationship is predicted to be moderated by environmental dimensions. Thus, the following two research questions are addressed in this study: (1) Does IC influence the performance of new high-tech firms? (2) To what extent does environment moderate the IC-firm performance relationship?; Resource based view and contingency theory are integrated and used as a basis for the presentation of hypotheses. A model of these hypothesized relationships is proposed and tested using 161 new high-tech firms. Path analysis and hierarchical regression are used to test the hypotheses. The findings of this study suggest that human capital is the most critical component of intellectual capital when predicting operating performance of high-tech, new ventures, while intellectual property is the crucial component when predicting market-based performance. The industrial environment does matter as intellectual capital components interact with environmental dimensions to impact firm performance. |
