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Abstract: Previous studies have demonstrated that utilization of information technology (IT) in company operations has the potential to significantly augment a company's performance. Knowledge, too, as a key performance driver has been brought to the fore in recent discussions, has been suggested to bring an additional explanation of the role of IT in boosting performance. This paper combines these perspectives so as to address the question of how intellectual capital impacts customer value (as a specific type of organizational performance) directly or as moderated by IT practices the organization employs. We also investigate how customer value affects market performance. The research model is based on survey data collected from a cross-industrial sample of companies with at least 100 employees in Serbia. The data is analyzed by structural equation modeling with the partial least squares technique (PLS) to examine hypotheses concerning key causalities between the study variables. The results demonstrate that intellectual capital has a significant impact on market performance, and that this impact is moderated by IT practices. The paper contributes to the academic discussion on intellectual capital, and provides useful information for managers concerning investments in intellectual capital and IT practices.
Keywords: intellectual capital, IT practices, customer value, organizational performance, market performance
1.Introduction
The huge impact of utilizing IT for business performance has been well documented in the academic literature (e.g. Bharadwaj 2000, Santhanam & Hartono 2003; Melville et al. 2004). Simultaneously, the role of knowledge as a performance driver is increasingly recognized (e.g. Kogut & Zander, 1992; Spender & Grant 1996; Lee & Choi 2003; Darroch 2005; Zack, McKeen & Singh et al. 2009). The key value-generating facets of knowledge have been coined 'intellectual capital' (IC). IC consists of knowledge firms utilize for gaining competitive advantage (Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998; Youndt, Subramaniam & Snell 2004). More specifically, key elements of IC are typically divided into three facets: human capital, structural capital, and relational capital (e.g. Bontis 1998; Roos et al. 1997).
Using information technologies to advance organizational knowledge handling is a cornerstone of knowledge management activities in firms (e.g. Alavi & Leidner 2001). As intellectual capital consists of knowledge-related assets, it seems logical to assume that the better an organization manages its knowledge, the more value it is able to derive from...