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The Relationship Between Intellectual Capital and Sustainability: An Analysis of Practitioner’s Thought

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Intellectual Capital Management as a Driver of Sustainability

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how intellectual capital (IC) and sustainability influence each other in practitioners’ perspective. Three steps methodology was applied to reach this purpose. First, the study employs a text mining analysis of 1651 posts published by practitioners in one of the leading sources of sustainability: the website CSRwire.com. Concepts extracted from the posts are then analyzed using a factor analysis to summarize them within themes. Finally, themes are analyzed to identify how IC and sustainability influence each other using a correlation analysis. Results show that IC and sustainability are complex topics. Practitioners discuss 17 main themes split into Financial (also known as Economic), Social and Environmental sustainability. The three main components of IC: human capital, relational capital and structural capital connect with most of these themes proving that IC and sustainability influence each other.

Financial Sustainability, Social Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability, Intellectual Capital.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See http://www.csrwire.com/distribution, accessed on December, 30th 2016.

  2. 2.

    See http://info.leximancer.com/

  3. 3.

    One key element in factor analysis is to define the number of factors to retain. According to Gie Yong and Pearce (2013, p. 85), “One criterion that can be used to determine the number of factors to retain is Kaiser’s criterion which is a rule of thumb. This criterion suggests retaining all factors that are above the eigenvalue of 1.”

  4. 4.

    The comment is reported in a post published by Kelly Eisenhardt on a post published on 9 May 2016.

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Acknowledgement

I gratefully acknowledge the support given by Prof. Maurizio Massaro and Prof. Andrea Garlatti from Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine, and Prof. John Dumay from Macquarie University, Sydney.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche, Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine, Italy

    Francesca Dal Mas

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  1. Francesca Dal Mas
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Correspondence to Francesca Dal Mas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ICAA – Intellectual Capital Association, Santarém, Portugal

    Florinda Matos  & Valter Vairinhos  & 

  2. DINÂMIA’CET – IUL, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, Lisboa, Portugal

    Florinda Matos

  3. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Santa Catarina, Brazil

    Paulo Maurício Selig

  4. The New Club of Paris e.V., Lund University, Vienna, Austria

    Leif Edvinsson

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Dal Mas, F. (2019). The Relationship Between Intellectual Capital and Sustainability: An Analysis of Practitioner’s Thought. In: Matos, F., Vairinhos, V., Selig, P.M., Edvinsson, L. (eds) Intellectual Capital Management as a Driver of Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-79051-0_2

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