Summary of the Research Project

In the last decade the notion of Intellectual Capital (IC) has been recognized as a key interpretation to denote all those cognitive and intangible resources that play a fundamental role to define the value of an organizational system and to plan and govern the managerial actions for internal processes effectiveness and efficiency improvement. In the last years scientists belonging to different economic and management research streams have focalised their attention on theoretical as well as practical aspects of the management and measurement of IC. However, although this literature is already rich of contributions, it is still in its first steps of evolution. This project begins with a deep understanding about scientific research insights and it is finalized to define a portfolio of managerial solutions, i.e. a groups of models and tools for assessing and managing IC aimed to drive organizational systems value creation dynamics through the improvement of their performance. Although the group of the approaches and tools developed along the research project have general validity in terms of applicability in different organizational and industrial contexts, the empirical attention of the project is on the health care organizations. In these organizations, the proposed models are tested and validated through case studies, action-research and statistical investigations.

The fundamental assumption grounding the research project is the following. Value creation dynamics are the result of the continuous improvement of the organizational performance. In fact, through the increase of the performance an organization is able to better satisfy the wants, the needs and the expectations of its stakeholders. In order to improve performance, an organization needs to continuously improve its effectiveness as well as efficiency. It requires the ability to design, implement, manage and develop the organizational processes at the base of the production of organization’s output and outcome. It is possible only through the ownership and the development, along the time, of specialized competences and dynamics capabilities of developing and updating them.

These are rooted on a group of different sets of cognitive and intangible resources specifically referred to each organizational system. It determines that IC, which groups these resources, is the main source of the value creation dynamics. In this sense, through assessing and managing IC, organizations are able to develop their competences portfolio and to systematically support the performance improvement driving value creation dynamics. Finally, the project proposes an examination of the main strategic and managerial implications useful to plan and implement programmes and actions for the IC strategic management.