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1. Introduction
In modern economies, as a result of the transition from production economy to knowledge economy, intellectual assets, meaning distinctive knowledge, abilities, values and methods companies, have become the primary “economy wealth production factor” compared to physical assets, such as land, equipment, capital, etc. (Seetharaman et al., 2002). These intellectual assets, which can be converted into profit but are not reflected on the financial statements of the firms, are called intellectual capital (IC) (Bontis, 1998; Hunter et al., 2005). This description encompasses a vast area ranging from knowledge and skills residing in employees to the knowledge that remains at the firm when the employees go home (Chang and Hsieh, 2011). To be able to offer high valued products and services, companies should invest in IC and use it efficiently (Chang, 2007; Wang, 2006).
Being the primary wealth production factor in modern economies, IC is an essential source of sustainable performance and competitive advantage (Chang, 2007; Chang and Hsieh, 2011; Bueno et al., 2014). According to the resource-based view, competitive advantage and high-level performance can only be achieved by owning strategic resources, especially intangible ones (Hsu and Wang, 2012), and appropriate use of these resources (Riahi-Belkaoui, 2003). Strategic resources might be tangible or intangible. The more valuable, scarce, untransferable, inimitable and unreplaceable these resources are, the more important they become for ensuring competitiveness and high-level performance. All these attributes that are used to describe the features of strategic resources are also ascribed to IC in the literature (Molodchik et al., 2012; Riahi-Belkaoui, 2003). Being an intangible strategic asset, IC is anticipated to have a linkage to high-level firm performance (Riahi-Belkaoui, 2003). In other words, if IC is a resource providing a competitive advantage, it should also have a positive effect on the firm’s financial performance.
Recognition of the importance of IC in firm performance and competitiveness brings the need to manage it effectively. As part of effective management, given the intangible nature of IC, identifying and measuring IC is a difficult task (Chang and Hsieh, 2011). In this case, firms undoubtedly require using certain methodologies to determine and measure the use of IC. One of these methodologies was, developed by Pulic (1998), the value-added (VA) intellectual coefficient (VAIC). VAIC is a...