ارزیابی بهره وری و کارایی سرمایه های فکری: یک برنامه کاربردی برای بخش تولید قایق بادبانی ایتالیایی

In this paper we evaluate the efficiency and productivity of Intellectual Capital (IC) through the assessment of Bests Practices, that have successfully implemented strategies of Intellectual Capital management. The techniques selected for appraising the productivity of intangibles are the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). This approach allows a direct comparison between firms of the same industry in the perspective of improvement through benchmarking. It overcomes one of the main limitations of the current intangibles metrics comparing enterprises on the basis their Intellectual Capital management. The paper gives both academic and practical insights that could be used for the operational and strategic Intellectual Capital management. Actually, the outcome of the application gives to inefficient companies some directions for progress, that should constitute the basis for the formulation of future Intellectual Capital management strategies. Finally, we apply the analysis to the Italian yacht manufacturing sector in order to offer yachting companies guidelines for Intellectual Capital management.

Nowadays companies productivity and business performance depend in great measure on an efficient management of their Intellectual Capital, making the evaluation of the return on Intellectual Capital investments a critical obstacle to turning those investments into sources of competitive advantage. In fact, most firms are not able to assess how much they spend on Intellectual Capital, let alone how much they receive from those investments, and consequently many of them either under-invest or make ineffective investments (Zambon, 2003). The analysis of intangibles as economic growth factors needs conceptual and analytical tools taking into account their unique characteristics and economic significance. This applies not only to the theoretical aspects, but also to the associated measurement and evaluation efforts. At firm level, the most relevant phenomenon, is the value of intangible assets increasingly outgrowing that of tangible assets, particularly, for knowledge intensive firms. Actually, traditional accounting models of evaluation are not enough to determine the competitiveness of an organization and nothing can say about its strategic effectiveness in the Intellectual Capital management. There is the necessity of new approaches allowing to assess the factor over which the competition is currently played: Intellectual Capital management and exploitation (Lev, 2003a and Lev, 2003b). To answer this need, numerous and innovative methods of measure and management of intangibles have been elaborated. However, these methods are not widely adopted due both to their subjectivity and to the delay of the business culture into accepting these knowledge-based tools of management. Above all, the analysis of the current methods for the measurement of intangible assets and Intellectual Capital put in evidence the lack of an explicit connection between Intellectual Capital investments and management, and their effects on business performance. This suggests a need for an investigation into the link between Intellectual Capital management and business performance (Chin et al., 2010 and Carlucci and Schiuma, 2006). The importance of such study is strengthened by contemporary economy being indeed a knowledge-based or knowledge economy. Moreover, an analysis of Intellectual Capital efficiency and productivity in terms of business performance should provide both academic and practical insights that could be used for Intellectual Capital operational and strategic management (Chen et al., 2005, Cheung et al., 2003 and Meenakshi and Smith, 2002).

The paper analyse the relationship between Intellectual Capital management and firm performance of Italian yachting companies using DEA and MPI as empirical instruments. Moreover, it describes the strategic importance of the organization Intellectual Capital as a source of achievement of competitive advantage. On the basis on an efficiency and productivity analysis of Italian yachting companies in the 4 years period 2005–2008, the study reveals that about half of the sample achieve efficiency, while the remaining companies have to improve in the management of their Intellectual Capital in order to catch up with their competitors. The results of the study classify the companies analyzed in a ranking that reflect their ability in managing their own Intellectual Capital, identifying the Best Practises of the sector. The firms that want to improve their performance have to follow the example of these Best Practices: enterprises of the same industry that share the same processes of exploitation of the Intellectual Capital. This is the main reason that impose a choice of a sample belonging to the same industry: otherwise DEA benchmarks would lose any meaning for inefficient enterprises, because the value-creation process of intangible assets is surely very different depending on industrial sectors. Then input and output slacks are measured in order to give to inefficient companies a direction for progress. In fact, input and output targets are extremely important to understand major organizational and structural problems within a company. The results show that enterprises that invest more in Intellectual Capital are not automatically the ones that get better business performance but there is a cause-effect relation only if an enterprise is excellent in the management of its Intellectual Capital. The application of MPI shows that less than half of the companies of the sample improved their efficiency in the period of time considered and the comparison with the DEA results allows to deepen the conclusions on Intellectual Capital management. The results give both academic and practical insights that could be used for the operational and strategic management of an organization Intellectual Capital. Finally, DEA and MPI have long been used as excellent analytical tools for studying efficiency and productivity in profit and non-profit organizations, but little has been mentioned about the applicability of them on knowledge-based companies to evaluate the efficiency Intellectual Capital management.