The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 68–82

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The British Accounting Review

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Reflections and projections: A decade of Intellectual Capital AccountingResearch

James Guthrie a,*, Federica Ricceri b, John Dumay c

aDepartment of Accounting and Corporate Governance, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, AustraliabUniversity of Padua, Italyc The University of Sydney, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 7 February 2011Received in revised form 21 April 2011Accepted 25 May 2011

Keywords:Intellectual capitalAccountingResearchScholarshipLiterature review

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: james.guthrie@mq.edu.au (J. Gu

0890-8389/$ – see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltddoi:10.1016/j.bar.2012.03.004

a b s t r a c t

The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the field of Intellectual CapitalAccounting Research (ICAR). The literature indicates that an organisational and businessrevolution is in progress concerning the need to understand the value of knowledgeresources and how to manage them. The paper explores the field of ICAR by examininga decade of published research since Petty and Guthrie’s (2000) seminal paper on ICA,“Intellectual capital literature review: Measurement, reporting and management” as pub-lished in the Journal of Intellectual Capital.The paper has four specific contributions. The first contribution is to identify the field ofscholarship associated with ICAR. The second is to provide a comprehensive picture ofwhat has happened in the field of ICAR over the past decade. Third, it provides evidence asto how and why the field of ICAR is changing. Fourth, it highlights areas for future researchand policy developments.From these four contributions our definition of Intellectual Capital Accounting (ICA)emerges. That is, ICA is an accounting, reporting and management technology of relevanceto organisations to understand and manage knowledge resources. It can account andreport on the size and development of knowledge resources such as employee compe-tencies, customer relations, financial relationships and communication and informationtechnologies. Additionally, the analysis highlights several interesting patterns andworrying trends in the field of ICAR.

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1. Introduction

Since the 1980s the world’s economy has rapidly changed from an industrial to a knowledge base. In the new knowledgeeconomy wealth is created by developing and managing knowledge (Ricceri & Guthrie, 2009). These value creatingknowledge resources are commonly referred to as intellectual capital (IC) (see Stewart, 1997, p. x). Value is no longermeasured solely on the basis of financial outcomes; rather the value of activities that develop knowledge resources must alsobe considered. Doing so helps us understand how employees, customers and activities contribute to value creation, leading usto the challenge of how to identify, measure and report on the value of our knowledge resources. Intellectual CapitalAccounting (ICA) has been developed to meet this challenge (Ricceri, 2008).

From an academic perspective, the interest in ICA has led to the creation of two specialist journals publishing, IntellectualCapital Accounting Research (ICAR): Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting (JHRCA) in 1996 and the Journal of

thrie).

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J. Guthrie et al. / The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 68–82 69

Intellectual Capital (JIC) in 2000. Additionally, other generalist accounting journals have shown interest in ICAR, publishingindividual papers, and special issues. With over a decade of published research on ICA, its development can be followed byexamining the journal published research literature. This is the purpose of our paper.

As a starting point our paper considers the arguments of Petty and Guthrie’s (2000) seminal paper on ICA, “Intellectualcapital literature review: Measurement, reporting and management” as published in the Journal of Intellectual Capital anduses them as a foundation fromwhich to build the review of the IC literature in the period since the paper was published. ThePetty and Guthrie (2000) paper was chosen as the starting point because it appeared in the first volume of the JIC and has todate been cited over 400 times.1 We develop a descriptive meta- analysis of over 400 ICAR journal articles, using a methodpreviously employed to select and categorise academic papers (see also Broadbent & Guthrie, 2008; Guthrie & Murthy, 2009;Parker, 2005). This analysis is used to evaluate, identify and address future research agendas. In doing so, our paper answersfour inter related research questions:

1. What is the scholarship field of ICAR?2. What has happened in the field of ICAR over the past decade?3. How and why is the field changing?4. What is the future for ICAR?

Our paper demonstrates how ICAR has moved fromwhat Petty and Guthrie (2000) described as stage one and stage tworesearch, establishing and developing ICAR as a field and legitimising ICA as an area of multi-disciplinary and multi-focusedresearch. From this we argue a third stage of IC research is emerging based on a critical and performative analysis of ICpractices in action. The descriptive analysis highlights several interesting patterns emerging such as the dominance ofcontinental European research, the organisational basis of the majority of research and the importance of specialist journaloutlets. When the various research method types were considered, commentary and normative policy papers remained themost popular research areas, rather than empirical papers. To some extent, these patterns represent wider patterning in otherspecialised accounting research literature (see also Broadbent & Guthrie, 2008; Guthrie & Murthy, 2009; Parker, 2005).

Thefindingsof ourpaperoutlinehowICARhasdevelopeda strongand continuing tradition, providing important insights thathighlight areas for further development of research and policy. Additionally, our paper discusses several trends in the field of ICAscholarship, for example, how generalist journals provide little space for ICAR. We also create a debate between the advantagesand disadvantages of disseminating ICAR in specialised ICmedia such as conferences, journals, books and researchmonographs,versus the need to disseminate ICAR through more generalised accounting media outlets (see Parker & Guthrie, 2009).

Our paper has four further sections. Section two offers a brief review of the original article and a general review ofcontemporary ICAR literature, establishing what constitutes the field of ICAR. Section three outlines our research methodfollowed by a descriptivemeta-analysis of the ICAR papers. Section four discusses issues associatedwith the field of ICAR. Last,a conclusion outlining an agenda for future ICA research is provided.

2. Petty and Guthrie (2000) literature review

The Petty and Guthrie literature review (2000, p. 155) showed IC was a complex and poorly understood technologycommenting:

1 http

It is an interesting time to be active in the field of research into intellectual capital (IC). In many respects, thecommunity of intellectual capital researchers and practitioners is at an important juncture. The battle for acceptance ofIC as a topic worthy of boardroom discussion and serious academic investigation has largely been won. The prolifer-ation of conferences on intellectual capital, the myriad of books, working papers, and journal articles that grapple withthe topic, and the large number of consulting firms offering products (services) centred on intellectual capital, aretestament to this.

Petty and Guthrie (2000) is seminal to the ICAR literature because they produced a detailed review of IC in the 1980s and90s. They were the first to review how the early interest in the new knowledge economy impacted organisations and how ICreporting and accounting practices developed. They comprehensively explored developments in Europe, North America andother countries. More importantly they wrote at a time when only a few specialised ICA academic networks, conferences orjournals existed.

Petty and Guthrie identified that ICAR focused on understanding how IC created value, leading to the perceived need toinform capital market and other stakeholders of the process. Additionally national governments (e.g. Denmark) and supra-national groups (e.g. OECD) took interest in, and action towards, developing an understanding of IC. Petty and Guthrie(2000, p. 170) concluded:

. that the most valuable insights are likely to result from a combination of research methods being applied ininvestigating specific problems as they present at a firm (case study) andmarket (survey and experimental work) level.

://scholar.google.com (as at 27 December 2010).

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In short, the embryonic stage of research into IC offers the potential for researchers to make meaningful contributionsthat are theoretical, methodological, or empirical in nature.

Petty and Guthrie (2000) also outlined two stages in developing IC as a research field. First-stage efforts typically focusedon raising awareness as to why recognising and understanding the potential of IC towards creating andmanaging sustainablecompetitive advantage is important. Additionally, attempts to make the invisible visible were characterised by the creation ofguidelines and standards. These early publications typically argued “intellectual capital is something significant and should bemeasured and reported”, without referring to specific empirical research (Petty & Guthrie, 2000, p. 162). Most researchconducted prior to the mid 1990s is considered first stage.

The second stage established IC research as a legitimate undertaking and gathered evidence in support of its furtherresearch (Petty & Guthrie, 2000; pp.155–6). Additionally, interdisciplinary researchers investigated, at an organisational level,how capital and labour markets reacted towards the potential for IC to create value. Therefore these investigations focussingon the “how” of IC were in their infancy at the time of Petty and Guthrie’s (2000) literature review and dealt mainly with theprocess of measuring and managing IC from a top-down perspective.

Since then ICAR has developed as a specialised research field within accounting and management as evidenced byspecialist academic conferences, books, monographs and publications in international specialist and generalistaccounting academic journals. As a result, academics and practitioners, supported by public, private and third sectorfunding, have developed multi-disciplinary contributions using different perspectives, including sociology, psychologyand economics.

The first and second stages contributed to a commonly accepted terminology of IC. Several classifications of IC have beenprovided (Boedker, Mouritsen, & Guthrie, 2008; Guthrie, Petty, & Ricceri, 2007; Ricceri, 2008), resulting in the identification ofthree main IC components and related elements. While these components may have different names, they basically refer to:human competencies, the knowledge embedded in people; structural capital, the knowledge embedded in the organisationand its systems; and relational capital, the knowledge embedded in customers and other relationships external to theorganisation. Emanating from these three components, we define ICA as amanagement, accounting and reporting technologytowards understanding, measuring and reporting knowledge resources such as employee competencies, customer rela-tionships, brands, financial relationships and information and communication technologies.

It is important to distinguish ICA from ‘intangible accounting’ which represents a more traditional approach that focusesonly on those IC elements that are recognised by traditional financial statements (e.g. brands, patents and copyrights). Tworecent special issues on intangible accounting, first in Accounting and Business Research, in 2008 (Vol 3) and then in Abacus,2009 (Vol 3) pay scant attention to ICA (see Skinner, 2008a; pp. 198-9). The authors in these special issues mainly concentrateon intangible assets as defined by traditional financial accounting and international standards (IAS 38 and IFRS 3) and do notrecognise something as ‘intangible’, if it is not capitalised but recognised as an expense.

However, in reviewing Skinner’s (2008a) arguments about intangibles, we refute outright his thesis that knowledge-based firms have been successful in capital markets and therefore current accounting practices are functioning effectivelyin relationship to IC. Skinner’s (2008a,b, pp. 215–216) arguments are based on a review of a fairly narrow range of theoreticaland empirical studies. In contrast, the views and experience of those with expertise in the ‘real world’ of reporting intan-gibles and IC offering an alternative perspective (Striukova, Unerman, & Guthrie, 2008; Unerman, Guthrie, & Striukova,2007).

Since we argue that ICAR is a separate field with its own specific focus, it would be useful for academics and practitionersto be informed of the progress made since Petty and Guthrie’s seminal review of ICAR. We propose to answer the remainingthree questions as the basis for the rest of our paper.

3. Research method

This section documents our methods for selecting and reviewing the papers utilised in our study. Primarily we useda similar method to other published studies, such as Parker (2005), Broadbent and Guthrie (2008) and Guthrie and Murthy(2009).

The review process was conducted in five different stages. In the first stage, the core research objectives were formulated,based on the work of Petty and Guthrie (2000). Based on this research objective, several classifications/codes, boundaries anddefinitions were determined in order to select articles on ICA. The data set was restricted to a ten year period from 2000 to2009. That is, from the end of 1999 as covered by Petty and Guthrie (2000) until the recent published articles available,including 2009.

The second stage involved the selection of journals. The journals consist of eight generalist internationally recognisedaccounting journals and two specialist journals, JIC and JHRCA. The eight generalist accounting journals were selectedbecause they are committed to publishing interdisciplinary accounting research and have in the past published the area of ICA(see Guthrie & Murthy, 2009, p. 129).

In the third stage, we examined the titles and abstracts of all articles published in the journals during the period (a total of2662) and selected articles containing aspects of ICAR, while eliminating non-ICAR articles. As a result we identified 423articles focussing on ICAR. We then downloaded the PDF versions of these papers and stored them in an Endnote databasecomplete with referencing details.

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The fourth stage pilot tested and adapted our classification system, based on the framework employed in Broadbent andGuthrie (2008), on a sample of papers. During this pilot stage two authors read the papers based on both abstracts and fulltext of the articles to discuss and make preliminary classifications. This resulted in a slightly modified coding scheme asoutlined in Table 1. Then one author manually coded all the papers while the second and third author checked the coding forconsistency. Occasionally, when there was coding ambiguity, the authors discussed the contents of the article until theyagreed on the same codes. The advantage of manual coding is whenwords with similar meaning such as ‘human capital’ and‘employees’ are encountered, they can be understood in their true sense and coded accordingly. Thus, manual coding allowedthe researchers to use implicit knowledge of the situation so they could effectively interpret idiomatic and metaphorical textand complex subordinate phrases. The following illustrates each of the individual elements as shown in Table 1 and providesexamples from the ICAR literature.

The first criterion is Jurisdiction (A). It is divided into general papers that do not have an empirical base (A1) such as a broadliterature review (e.g. Roslender, 2009), papers that focus on nations, regions, networks, alliances (A2) (e.g. Bontis, 2003,Canadian company disclosures) and papers that refer to an organisational setting (A1.1; A1.2; A2.1; A2.2; and A3). Within thepapers that refer to an organisational setting there was: A1.1 International - Industry which included papers based onevidence from specific industries belonging to specific countries (e.g. Bozzolan, O’Regan, & Ricceri, 2006; Cañibano & Sánchez,2009); A1.2 International - Organisational which included papers that used evidence from one or more organisationsbelonging to either multiple industries or multiple countries (e.g. Chaminade & Johanson, 2003; Guthrie et al., 2007); A2.1National - Industry which includes papers based on a specific industry belonging to one single country (e.g. Rowbottom,2002; Yongvanich & Guthrie, 2005); A2.2 National - Organisational which included papers that used evidence from orga-nisations belonging to a single country (e.g. Abeysekera & Guthrie, 2004; Bozzolan, Favotto, & Ricceri, 2003); and A3 whichincluded papers based on a specific organisation (e.g. Cuganesan & Dumay, 2009; Ditillo, 2004).

The second criterion is Organisational Focus (B). This was divided into six different elements (B1–B6). In more detail, theseelements were: B1 public listed organisations (e.g. García-meca, Parra, Larrán, &Martínez, 2005; Royal & O’Donnell, 2008); B2

Table 1Classification system for analysing ICA articles.

A. JurisdictionA1. Supra-national/international/comparative - generalA1.1. Supra-national/international/comparative - industryA1.2. Supra-national/international/comparative - organisationalA2. National – generalA2.1. National – industryA2.2. National – organisationalA3. One organisation

B. Organisational focusB1. Public listedB2. Private - SMEsB3. Private - othersB4. Public sectorB5. Not for profitB6. General/other

C. LocationC1. North AmericaC2. AustralasiaC3. United KingdomC4. Continental EuropeC5. Other

D. Focus of ICA literatureD1. External reporting - ICD other reports and mediaD2. AuditingD3. Accountability and governanceD4. Management control/strategyD5. Performance measurementD6. Other (including general)

E. Research methodsE1. Case/field study/interviewsE2. Content analysis/historical analysisE3. Survey/questionnaire/other empiricalE4. Commentary/normative/policyE5. Theoretical: literature review/empirical

F. ICA frameworks and modelsF0. No model proposedF1.0. Applies or considers previous modelsF1.1. Proposes a new model

Source: Adapted from Broadbent and Guthrie (2008).

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private SME (e.g. Chaminade & Roberts, 2003; Tovstiga & Tulugurova, 2007); B3 private others (e.g. Richardson & Welker,2001; Skoog, 2003); B4 public sector (e.g. Dumay & Guthrie, 2007; Sánchez, Elena, & Castrillo, 2009); B5 not for profit(e.g. Boedker, Guthrie, & Cuganesan, 2005; Fletcher, Guthrie, Steane, Roos, & Pike, 2003). Other types of organisations that didnot fit the five organisational types listed above, or that had no organisational focus were classified as: B6 general other (e.g.Pike & Roos, 2004).

The third criterion is the Regional Focus of the study (C). This is divided into five regions. C1 North America, including USAand Canada (e.g. Bontis, 2003; Chatzkel, 2003); C2 Australasia including Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia, such asChina, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, etc (e.g. Abeysekera & Guthrie, 2004; Guthrie, Petty, & Ricceri, 2006;Johanson, Koga, Skoog, & Henningsson, 2006); C3 United Kingdom including England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales (e.g.Bakhru, 2004; O’Regan, O’Donnell, Kennedy, Bontis, & Cleary, 2001); C4 Continental Europe including mainland Europeancountries such as Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy and the like (e.g. Bozzolan et al., 2003; Farneti & Guthrie, 2008; Olsson,2001); and C5 Other, that is countries that did not fall into the above classification, such as UAE and countries in Africa,South America etc (e.g. Firer & Williams, 2003; Jardón & Martos, 2009).

The fourth criterion is Focus of ICAR Literature (D). There were six specific elements used: D1 external reporting (Bozzolanet al., 2003; van der Meer-Kooistra & Zijlstra, 2001); D2 auditing (Bröcheler, Maijoor, & van Witteloostuijn, 2004); D3accounting and governance (e.g. Cerbioni & Parbonetti, 2007; Holland, 2001); D4 management control and strategy (e.g.Mouritsen, Larsen, & Bukh, 2005; Sveiby, 2001); and D5 performancemeasurement (e.g. Andriessen, 2004;Moeller, 2009). Allthe articles that could not be coded into the above classifications were coded as D6 other (e.g. Davison, 2008).

The fifth criterion is based on the Research Method used (E) and included six elements: E1, case studies (e.g. Boedker et al.,2005; Chaminade & Roberts, 2003); E2, content analysis or historical analysis (e.g. Beattie & Thomson, 2007; Guthrie, Petty,Yongvanich, & Ricceri, 2004); E3, surveys, questionnaires or experiments (e.g. Catasús & Gröjer, 2003; Tayles, Webster,Sugden, & Bramley, 2005). These first three elements relate to empirical studies in nature. The next two elements relate tonormative/theoretical studies. They were: E4, commentary or normative policy (Holland & Johanson, 2003; Roslender &Stevenson, 2009); E5, theoretical which included both literature reviews papers (e.g. Pike, Fernström, & Roos, 2005) andempirical research papers (e.g. Davila, 2005).

Some research papers proved problematic to classify into an exact element as two or three research methods may havebeen used. In such cases, the article was coded based on the dominant research method used for primary data analysis.

Finally, in the fifth stage we utilised the classifications to establish a range of descriptive statistics, allowing us tounderstand the patterns emerging from the reviewed articles. This provides the basis for our meta-analysis and discussion ofthe IC field over the period in question. The following section outlines themeta-analysis and is followed by an open discussionof our findings.

4. Meta-analysis

The purpose of this section is to provide a meta-analysis of the ICAR articles selected and to answer our proposed questiontwo: “What has happened in the field of ICAR over the past decade?” and question three: “How and why is the field changing?”Weconsider the spread of journals before turning to our classification framework.

The total number of articles focussing on ICAR was 423 and, of these, 297 articles were published in JIC (see Table 2).Table 2 highlights how the eight generalist journals only published 78 of the 423 (18.4%) total ICAR articles. Exploring this

findingwe note thatmost articles were part of IC special issues (e.g. AAAJ, AOS, CPA, and EAR), therefore reducing even furtherthe inclusion of ICAR articles in generalist journals. The yearly pattern of published articles in Fig. 1 shows a spike in 2009 ofarticles in specialist and generalist journals. We note this increase is mainly associated with increased page numbers and anincrease in the number of issues in the two specialist journals.

Additionally, since 1999 we note a consistent flow of ICAR articles slightly increasing over time. Again, we reason theincreased page numbers within specialist journals is the cause, not an acceptance of ICAR by the generalist journals. Thispatterning is consistent with Broadbent and Guthrie (2008) and Guthrie andMurthy (2009) who also identified the importantrole of specialised journals in publishing accounting research on specific topics.

4.1. Jurisdiction

The data in Table 3 shows the jurisdiction of the papers emanated. Interestingly, we note how the majority of papers takea top down approach, examining ICAR from a general or industry perspective. Only 118 (28.8%) of the papers examine ICAR atan organisational level (A1.2, A2.2 and A3). This highlights howmost ICAR tries to generalise findings across all organisationsas opposed to looking at the practice of IC from within an organisation. This is similar to the debate between ostensive(general or industry) and performative (organisational) approaches highlighted by Mouritsen (2006). He argues that it isbetter: “to understand IC as a concept and not only as an application of a pre-set idea” and suggests that “a performativeapproach to IC will enhance possibilities of developing new and interesting propositions about how IC works and is involvedin organisational and social transformation” (Mouritsen, 2006, p. 820). Thus the tendency to examine IC from above offerslittle understanding of how IC is implemented in practice (see also Dumay, 2009b).

Others, such as Cuganesan and Dumay (2009, p. 1161), go further and claimmore research is required at the organisationallevel to “render visible the complexity of intellectual capital” in order “to make relationships between IC elements and value

Table 2ICA articles in specialists and generalist journals (2000–09).

Journal name Journal code ICA articles Total articles % of ICA articles

Specialist journalsJournal of Intellectual Capital JIC 297 313 70.2%Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting JHRCA 48 84 11.3%Total ICA articles in specialist journals 345 397 81.6%

Generalist journalsAccounting Auditing and Accountability Journal AAAJ 22 337 5.2%European Accounting Review EAR 17 288 0.4.0%Accounting Organizations and Society AOS 11 345 2.6%Australian Accounting Review AAR 8 261 1.9%Management Accounting Research MAR 5 210 1.2%Accounting Forum AF 5 212 1.2%British Accounting Review BAR 3 177 0.7%Critical Perspectives on Accounting CPA 7 435 1.7%Total ICA articles in generalist journals 78 2265 18.4%

Total ICA articles in all journals 423 2662 100%

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creation accessible to managers seeking to act on IC”. Not doing so leaves ICA as an abstract construct which is difficult toimplement without offering concrete examples of how ICA is applied inside an organisation. Moreover, acknowledging thatthe ICA discipline is rooted in practice is an important reminder of the need for researchers to keep their work focused andrelevant (Guthrie et al., 2007).

4.2. Organisational focus

Table 4 highlights the extent of research in terms of different types of organisations. It demonstrates that apart fromgeneral other (B6), themost commonly researched organisation is publicly listed companies (B1) with 97 articles. Consideringpublicly listed companies contribute only about 10% of the world’s GNP, it seems that only a narrow view of ICA is dissem-inated. There are very few articles on private companies, including SMEs, the public sector and not for profit organisations inthe field of ICAR.

In examining publicly listed companies, as an organisational focus, it was found that many of the studies focused on thecontent, determinants and consequences of IC disclosure in capital markets (Abdolmohammadi, 2005; Bozzolan et al., 2003;Ghosh & Wu, 2007; Mavridis, 2005). Recent papers that focus on listed companies have explored human capital disclosureand value creation (e.g. Dumay & Tull, 2007; Murthy & Abeysekera, 2007). The dominance of publicly listed companies mightbe ascribed to easy access to annual reports and other publicly available information. However, in reviewing these papers wedid not find a dominant focus. Several themes were found including: the use of the balanced scorecard (e.g. Bose & Thomas,2007; O’Connor & Feng, 2005), various reporting media such as annual report (Bozzolan et al., 2006), stand-alone reports(Nielsen, Bukh, Mouritsen, Johansen, & Gormsen, 2006) or disclosure to the stock exchange (Dumay & Tull, 2007). Also,several papers focused on the use of IC by analysts (e.g. Johansson, 2007) and IPO prospectuses (e.g. Cordazzo, 2007). Analysisof the organisational focus within B1 highlights the lack of studies with an internal focus on management IC practices. Froman external perspective, over 90 studies focused on ICA using publicly listed companies.

Fig. 1. Specialist IC journal Pages 2000–9.

Table 3Jurisdiction.

Total %

A1. Supra-national/international/comparative - general 176 41.6%A1.2. Supra-national/international/comparative - organisational 20 4.7%A1.1. Supra-national/international/comparative - industry 17 4.0%A2. National - general 14 3.3%A2.1. National - industry 98 23.2%A2.2. National - organisational 56 13.2%A3. One organisation 42 9.9%

Grand total 423 100%

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The next most researched organisation is private and the types of organisations covered were banks, multinational firms,hotels, pharmaceuticals and others. On further investigation, what is of interest here is that of the 71 papers, only 7 dealt withthe financial impacts of IC on markets and profits. The remaining papers had a definite focus on IC management issues andstrategy. However, nearly all these studies are empirical investigations of some aspects of IC within an organisational setting.For instance, Bueno, Salmador, Rodriguez, and De Castro (2006) apply a complexity theory approach to developing IC strategyin a Spanish bank.

The least popular categories appear to be the public sector and not-for-profit. This is surprising considering that thesesectors combined make up around 45% of GDP (Dumay, Guthrie, & Farneti, 2010), and that there are significant differences inthe organisational context of the public and not-for-profit sectors (Ball & Bebbington, 2008; Broadbent & Guthrie, 2008) andwe would have expected similar differences in terms of ICAR.

Our in-depth review of the articles here indicates a wide spread of organisational types including universities (Cañibano &Sánchez, 2009), local governments (Farneti & Guthrie, 2008), hospitals (Habersam & Piber, 2003), government departments(Dumay & Guthrie, 2007), research organisations (Leitner & Warden, 2004), third sector (Fletcher et al., 2003), cultural andheritage organisations (Donato, 2008), police departments (Collier, 2001), and regional clusters (Pöyhönen & Smedlund,2004).

The range of organisational sites here is broad, but the extent towhich there is a body of in-depth research into a particularorganisational form is limited, meaning there are still ample research opportunities in this area. Also, when we analysed theICA focus of the studies the majority were concerned with management issues (Chang & Birkett, 2004; Mouritsen, Larsen, &Bukh, 2001) and only a few dealt with IC reporting (Catasús, Ersson, Gröjer, & Wallentin, 2007). Once again this might be anissue of access to organisations and availability of public IC information for research purposes.

4.3. Location

Table 5 illustrates the regional focus or the geographical location of the work undertaken. As highlighted in the table forthe selected journals the most active regions were: continental Europewith 193 (46%) papers, followed by Australasiawith 74(17%) and North America with 72 (17%). The United Kingdom, as a research site, and its authors have been relatively silentwith only 41 (10%) papers. Not surprisingly, Continental Europe is in the forefront of ICAR because, since the 1990s, Europeanauthors, especially Scandinavian countries, have continuously published ICAR articles and books (e.g. Bukh & Johanson, 2003;Johanson, Mårtensson, & Skoog, 2001; Mårtensson, 2009).

Continental European articles mainly focus on the European nations, indicating the strong tradition of IC research inEurope. Australasia has also produced a high number of articles and we argue that this is because Australasian researchers areinfluenced by European academic traditions. For example, Australasian researchers were the fourth largest number ofaccepted papers at the 2010 EAA conference.

Another area of interest is North American articles. Whenwe separate Canada and America, a strong presence of Canadianstudies is found in contrast to the size and academic population of America, where relatively few studies have been published.We suspect this is because much of the academic American accounting literature is concerned with intangible financialaccounting rather than ICA. Research has also been published in the period in other parts of the world including South Africa

Table 4Organisational focus.

Total %

B1. Publicly listed 97 22.9%B2. Private - SMEs 18 4.3%B3. Private - others 54 12.8%B4. Public sector 28 6.6%B5. Not for profit 7 1.7%B6. General/other 219 51.8%

Grand total 423 100%

Table 5Location.

Total %

C1. North America 72 17.0%C2. Australasia 74 17.5%C3. United Kingdom 41 9.7%C4. Continental Europe 193 45.6%C5. Other 43 10.2%

Grand total 423 100%

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(April, Bosma, & Deglon, 2003), Russia (Tovstiga & Tulugurova, 2007, 2009) and South America (Joia, 2000, 2004; Joia &Malheiros, 2009). Also in more recent years, we note an increase in studies from emerging economies such as India(Murthy & Abeysekera, 2007) and especially China (Kumar & Ellingson, 2007; Yi & Davey, 2010). This suggests that developingeconomies will potentially become the new hotspots for ICAR and practice.

4.4. Focus of ICA literature

Table 6 represents the focus of the ICAR literature. The most popular focus of ICAR is management accounting which has160 papers. We also observe howmore than two thirds of the published articles use a “management control/strategy” (D4) oran “external reporting” (D1) focus. Little has been published about accountability, governance (D3) and auditing (D2).

The extent of publications in management control and strategy, as the most researched area of interest, is highlighted inTable 6, representing 160 articles covering a wide range of management-related subjects. For instance, there were articles onthe Balanced Scorecards (Flamholtz, 2003) and its use for managing IC (O’Connor & Feng, 2005), managing IC in differentorganisational settings such as service organisations (Namasivayam & Denizci, 2006) and for the not-for-profit sector (Kong,2007), and for mapping IC inside organisations (Hellström & Husted, 2004).

A group of 46 articles did not have empirical content and tended to be either commentaries or policy statements similar tothose referred to by Petty and Guthrie (2000) as first stage contributions (e.g. Brennan & Connell, 2000; García-Ayuso, 2003;Roslender & Fincham, 2001). It is interesting to note that most of these papers were at the beginning of the decade and therewere fewer at the end of the decade, supporting our finding of a move from normative commentary-type papers toempirically based research as shown in Fig. 2.

4.5. Research methods

Next, Table 7 considers the research methods used within the selected articles depicting the spread used to study ICA. TheTable shows that commentary/normative/policy is the most commonly used, followed by surveys/questionnaire and case/field study/interviews. Content analysis of annual reports and historical analysis (E2) are also popular. Many papers have useda combination of interviews and surveys and are case studies that provide in-depth details of ICA within different organi-sations. There are a growing number of theoretical studies published that are represented in E5 (Nielsen & Madsen, 2009),whilst there are fewer articles on theoretical/empirical studies that link theory with empirics.

The first three categories (E1, E2 and E3) could be consolidated as an ‘empirical’ theme and the next category (E4) can beclassified as ‘normative’ studies. The final category, E5, connects theoretical to empirical studies. As we highlighted in Fig. 2,the trend over the last tenyears is a steady increase in empirical work, while normativework has declined. It is encouraging tosee more empirical work in this area, but there is a danger of over-dependence on empirical studies unsupported by theo-retical underpinning. Additionally, it reinforces our earlier comments which highlight a failure to convert IC theory intopractice caused by a concentration of top-down ostensive research instead of bottom-up performative research (see Dumay,2009b, 2009c; Mouritsen, 2006).

Table 6Focus of ICA literature.

Total %

D1. External reporting - ICD other reports and media 132 31.2%D2. Auditing 1 0.2%D3. Accountability and governance 7 1.7%D4. Management control/strategy 160 37.8%D5. Performance measurement 77 18.2%D6. Other (including general) 46 10.9%

Grand total 423 100%

Fig. 2. Empirical vs. normative ICA papers (2000–09).

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4.6. ICAFrameworks

Building on the discussion of research methods is our analysis of the use of ICA frameworks in the published research asoutlined in Table 8. Three interesting facts are evidenced in the table. First, most papers (66.2%) do not address ICA frame-works again highlighting the inability to take an existing IC framework into consideration when researching IC. On the otherhand, the ICAR literature hasmainly concentrated on the development of new frameworks (22% of papers) comparedwith theutilisation of existing frameworks (11.8% of papers).

On further investigation, we find the trend to develop new ICA frameworks is waning in the later half of the decade asshown in Fig. 3. We believe this indicates that the ICAR field is maturing and becoming entrenched as a discipline. It isdeveloping into a legitimate field within accounting and management as more researchers use existing frameworks to frametheir research.

5. Discussion

Leading on from ourmeta-analysis,we now turn to discussing our observations from amore qualitative perspective, buildingup to answering our final question four “What is the future for ICAR?” in the conclusion of our paper. In developing an answer,two broad topics are addressed. First, we identify and discuss how ICAR has developed as a specialist research field. Second, wediscuss the implications of ICAR as a specialist research field and respond to some of the issues raised in the meta-analysis.

5.1. ICA as specialist research

We claim that ICAR is a specialist research field because, as evidenced in our analysis of papers, we show how ICAR hasdeveloped a repertoire of published accounting research, promoting discourse via perspectives influenced by differentcountries, organisations, research methods, etc. Furthermore, ICAR has matured from both the first and second stages ofdevelopment, as evidenced by the narrowing gap between developing new ICA frameworks and utilising existing frameworksand the increased volume of published research in generalist and specialist journals.

We further argue that a third stage of critical ICAR development is emerging which is characterised by research that takesa critical examination of IC in practice. The infancy of this critical third stage beganwith the 2004 special edition of JIC entitled“IC at the crossroads - theory and research” (Chatzkel, 2004;Marr & Chatzkel, 2004). The third stage gained further impetus andreinforcement with Mouritsen’s (2006) seminal AAAJ paper “Problematising intellectual capital research: Ostensive versusperformative IC” and continued to develop in 2009 with the special edition of CPA (Vol. 20 No. 7) called “Critical perspectives onintellectual capital” (Mouritsen & Roslender, 2009; Roslender & Stevenson, 2009). Additionally, critical papers appeared in JICby Dumay (2009a, 2009b), in AAAJ by Cuganesan and Dumay (2009) and in JHRCA by Roslender (2009). Thus the third stagewas starting to gain considerable impetus and it will be interesting to see how it develops over the coming years.

Table 7Research methods.

Total %

E1. Case/field study/interviews 82 19.4%E2. Content analysis/historical analysis 46 10.9%E3. Survey/questionnaire/other empirical 103 24.3%E4. Commentary/normative/policy 152 35.9%E5. Theoretical: literature review/empirical 40 9.5%

Grand total 423 100.0%

Table 8ICA frameworks and models.

Total %

F0. No model proposed 280 66.2%F1.0. Applies or considers previous models 50 11.8%F1.1. Proposes a new model 93 22.0%

Grand total 423 100.0%

J. Guthrie et al. / The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 68–82 77

Since the 1990s, the community of ICA researchers has also grown through attracting newer scholars drawn to under-standing IC in action (e.g. Chaminade & Roberts, 2003; Chang & Birkett, 2004; Dumay, 2009c) and by engaging in debatesabout defining IC and utilising guidelines (Edvinsson & Kivikas, 2007; Farneti & Guthrie, 2008; Johanson, Koga, Almqvist, &Skoog, 2009; Mouritsen et al., 2001; Ricceri, 2008). Accordingly, we witnessed an upsurge in newer scholars in countrieswhere the first stage of ICARwas established, such as the European nations, Canada and Australia. However, we are heartenedalso by the increased input from the new economic giants such as China and India. These two countries alone hold nearly halfof the world’s population, so it will be interesting to observe how ICAR continues to emerge in these places.

The emergence and consolidation of a scholarly ICA community has been sponsored and supported by governments,universities, academic journals and conferences. For example, the Hong Kong Government has poured substantial resourcesinto the development of IC as evidenced by the establishment of the Intellectual Capital Management Consultancy Programme(see http://www.ipd.gov.hk/eng/icm.htm). Already this programme has participated in IC research and consultancies withover 500 Chinese SMEs, rivalling the scope and scale of seminal IC projects such as the Meritum Project (2002) or thedevelopment of the Danish IC guidelines (Mouritsen et al., 2003). Additionally, Hong KongPolytechnic University has fundeda Knowledge Management Research Centre.

From the perspective of journals one of the longest standing outlets for ICAR are journals such as JIC. The number of ICAand knowledge management (KM) journals is increasing. According to Serenko and Bontis (2009) there are 20 journalsdedicated to the dissemination of IC and KM research (of which IC is a small subset and interestingly the list excluded JHRCA).Additionally, as we have shown in our research, prominent generalist accounting research journals such as Accounting,Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ); Accounting, Organizations and Society (AOS), Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA)and Accounting Forum (AF) have included ICAR. More importantly, extra attention has been paid to ICAR of late through specialeditions of generalist research journals.

Through the 2000s and onwards, the three leading international interdisciplinary accounting research conferences, theEuropean Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference (IPA), AAAJ’s Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Research inAccounting Conference (APIRA), and the Critical Perspectives on Accounting Conference (CPAC), have offered greater opportu-nities for ICA researchers to disseminate and receive feedback on their work. Adding to the list of generalist accountingconferences is for example:

� British Accounting and Finance Association Annual Conference;� European Accounting Association Annual Congress; and� Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference.

Fig. 3. Developing new versus considering existing IC frameworks 2000–9.

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A number of specialist conferences also exist and have become annual or biannual events. These included:

� The 7th International Conference on Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management & Organisational Learning (ICICKM2010) in Hong Kong;

� The 2nd European Conference on Intellectual Capital (ECIC 2010) in Lisbon;� Journal of Human Resource Costing & Accounting Conference 2011, Edinburgh;� 3rd European Conference on Intellectual Capital, Nicosia, 2011 Cyprus;� The 6th International Forum on Knowledge Asset Dynamics (IFKAD 2011), "Knowledge-Based Foundations of the

Service Economy", 15–17 June, Tampere, Finland.

Evenwith continued progress in the development of ICAR dissemination, many ICA researchers still feel excluded from thegeneralist accounting research community for two reasons. First, is the lack of recognition of specialist ICA journals in theaccounting and business school rankings. As Serenko and Bontis (2009, p. 4) attest, “The academic field of KM/IC is relativelyyoung but growing at an accelerated rate. Unfortunately, the few academic journals that do currently exist do not have a longlegacy, which would support their recognition in general management-wide rankings”. Second is the apparent bias againstICAR and its related theories and research methodologies exhibited by editors and editorial boards’ members of many so-called highly rated generalist accounting journals. This is because these journals and their editors see the problem of IC asa financial (intangibles) accounting problem (e.g. Skinner, 2008a), rather than the problem of trying to understanding howintellectual capital is linked to value creation (e.g. Mouritsen et al., 2001). Although according to our research this appears tobe waning in some instances as evidenced by recent special editions in a generalist accounting journals.

In sharp contrast to successfully ‘coming out’ in the early 2000s, we now see a trend towards specialist research groupingssuch as ICA researchers opting to retreat behind closed doors, seeking their own scholarly groupings. Subsequently many onlyattend specialist conferences and publish in specialist journals. We applaud and encourage dissemination among experts;however it carries the risk of retreating from engagement with other specialist accounting researchers in generalistconferences. As Serenko and Bontis (2009, p. 6) attest:

“.scholars striving to convey their findings face two options. First, they may submit their manuscripts to one of theKM/IC-specific outlets that will give their works the best exposure to a target audience. Regrettably, if the rankings ofthese journals are low or non-existent, which is a present situation with KM/IC journals, the quality of this researchmay be questioned by colleagues, promotion committees and granting agencies. Second, KM/IC scholars may submittheir papers to well-ranked non-KM specific outlets. However, despite the recognition of research quality and impacton a future academic career, this work may potentially remain unnoticed by the general KM/IC community that maytend to read mostly KM/IC-specific outlets.”

Unashamedly, our paper focuses on refereed journal papers as they are regarded as the most highly valued accountingacademic publications (Parker, Guthrie, & Gray,1998). In the last decade the extent and quality of research activity has becomea key focus for judging academic and university performance. In doing this, various national research assessment exerciseshave been undertaken (Ashton et al., 2009; Northcott & Linacre, 2010), which only in part rely upon published journal qualityrankings. In Australia, there is the government backed Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), whilst the AustralianBusiness Deans Council (ABDC) has produced its own list. In the United Kingdom, the influential ABS rankings list has recentlydecided to remove JIC and JHRCA. In Australia, the 2010 ERA ranked JIC as a B and JHRCA as a C. These lists are becoming moreinfluential in determining authors’ preferences for publishing and researching (Northcott & Linacre, 2010) and if JIC andJHRCA were not available as an outlet there would be little space available in more generalist journals for ICA type research.

However, as highlighted by Ashton et al. (2009, p. 201):

“[.] relyingon journal rankings to capture researchquality, especially in theaccounting andfinance, a practice seeminglyon the increase inmanyUK institutions, and also in the rankings of business schools produced bynewspapers such as theFinancial Times, is likely to be misleading in capturing the real level of research quality in these research areas.”

Therefore, we advocate that rather than narrowing what is considered quality accounting research by so-called “journalquality rankings”, we should be developing alternative spaces for academic discourse. Rather than stifling innovation andnew emerging areas, we should encourage new research ideas and research outlets (Hopwood, 2009).

5.2. Responses

Next, we offer some responses in relation to the concerns raised in the original meta-analysis. First, we recognise howmany generalist technical accounting research conferences and journals privilege contemporary accounting for financialintangibles and positivistic research. However, a similar environment existed with specialist groups such as accountinghistory scholars in the 1960s and 1970s. These scholars persevered and eventually penetrated generalist accounting tobecome recognised (Parker & Guthrie, 2009).

Second, academics have limited time and travel budgets; therefore specialist researchers allocate their scarce resources totheir specialist conferences. However, this perpetuates the risk of becoming disconnected from the generalist accounting

J. Guthrie et al. / The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 68–82 79

research community. It does not provide a defensible rationale for failing to submit more research to generalist journals. Bynot submitting research papers to generalist journals ICA researchers cannot expect to be published there!

Thus there is an alternative route to promoting ICAR through disseminating research into generalist journals andconferences and not concentrate exclusively on specialised ICAR avenues. The generalist accounting journals and conferencespresent a significant pathway towards ICA researchers engaging with other accounting research colleagues. ICA researchersmust not retreat into a specialist research ghetto.

By displaying their wares to awider community of accounting research peers, ICA researchers join them in contributing todeveloping contemporary policy and discourse. By demonstrating how exciting and relevant their research is to younger andnewer scholars they contribute to attracting and developing the next generation of ICA researchers. With its peers, AAAJ andAPIRA stand ready to assist the specialist ICAR community in this important undertaking (Guthrie & Parker, 2006).

6. Conclusion - the future of ICAR

The first aim of our paper was to answer the question “What is the scholarship field of ICAR?”We achieved this by reviewingthe seminal Petty and Guthrie (2000) literature review and establishing ICA as a specialist field of research. More importantlywe witnessed how the first two stages of ICAR have matured and how a third stage of ICAR was taking hold focussing oncritically examining ICAR in practice.

Next we addressed the questions: “What has happened in the field of ICAR over the past decade?” and “How and why is thefield changing?” utilising a meta-analysis of the articles that focus on ICAR for a ten year period from 2000 to 2009 in tenselected journals. Our study shows that there is an increase in research in the field of ICA, with focus on developed countries,public listed companies and onmanagement control and strategy areas, and within recent years more empirical studies. Nextwe advocate some ways forward in answering the final question: “What is the future for ICAR?”

First, we advocate that ICA researchers need to take an active role in disseminating their research to the wider accountingresearch community. The potential to do so has never been greater as the generalist accounting journals have recently openedthe doors to special editions and have increased the space available for articles of all types. Additionally generalist accountingconferences do not shy away from accepting ICA papers for presentation. In reality it is up to us as the ICA researchers to takeour work to the generalist accounting community to receive feedback which informs us of the reasons papers may not beaccepted. We should be leading the way by offering our findings to the generalist journals and conferences and participatingin their debates.

Second, we advocate that the specialist journals should continue to promote acceptance of ICAR by openly seeking criticalviews on ICA as a field of research. There fore wewant to emphasise the need to continue developing critical ICAR research aspart of the third stage as important. The special edition titled “Intellectual capital: becoming critical” in JIC (Vol. 7 No.1), thespecial edition of CPA (Vol. 20 No. 7) called “Critical perspectives on intellectual capital” is evidence of how both specialist andgeneralist journals have contributed to the third stage.Unfortunately, upuntil just recently,wehavenotparticipated inmanyofthese debates within our own community, which leads us open to the criticism that our research field is a closed shop and weare unwilling to hear the opposing arguments of other accounting researchers. Only by confronting each others’ ideas in opendiscourse can we move forward. ICA researchers should become the catalyst of the discourse rather than turn away from it.

Thus, in conclusionwe find that there are significant omissions in the research agenda in both the specialist and generalistagendas. On the other hand, we see plentiful evidence of a counter-offensive to the capital market intangible research thatdominates financial accounting research (see for instance, Lev, 2008; Skinner, 2008a; Stark, 2008; Wyatt, 2008).

As evidenced by our research, we as ICA researchers are part of a growing academic research community, particularly inthe interpretive, qualitative and critical traditions researching various aspects of ICA. Through our research, we are estab-lishing bridgeheads of published research addressing subjects of emerging importance to world communities, embracingchange and engaging in being critical of experiences in the field. We welcome the task of grappling with the complexities oforganisational and institutional worlds rather than repeatedly modelling them and conceiving from them abstract positivistictheory.

The future research directions discussed above are about opening up new fields of enquiry, addressing neglected issuesand consolidating the field of ICAR. We must challenge the status quo, employ innovative methodologies, experiment withthe novel and take risks. We encourage you towatch the ICA space in the next decade for more critical field studies which willprovide empirical studies of IC in action and help develop broader theoretical research.

The conclusion of this article should be considered after taking into account the following limitations. First, the selection ofjournals was restricted to ten. Results could vary if more journals were scrutinised and if other forms of scholarly activitieswere included (e.g. monographs, conference papers, books, book chapters, PhD theses, etc). Second, although the codingprocess was performed systematically with utmost care to allow consistency, there could be errors of omission and codingcould have also been affected by coder bias. Third, in spite of using previous research to select the coding criteria so as tomakethe classification mutually exclusive and exhaustive, the addition of ‘other’ and ‘other general’ classifications may havecamouflaged some interesting findings.

In closing, Parker and Guthrie (2009) argue that consistent with its historical tradition, the accounting and the accountingresearch disciplines must remain resolutely pluralist if we are to have any significant and relevant future at all. The range oftopics studied, and the range of theoretical perspectives adopted, is extremely broad. Arguably, this is a highly desirablefeature that should be protected against narrow-minded approaches to the evaluation of research (Ashton et al., 2009, p. 207).

J. Guthrie et al. / The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 68–8280

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thankMichael Jones, joint editor of BAR, the participants at the 2009 BAA conference, where thepaper was presented by James Guthrie as a plenary, for their insights and helpful feedback and the participants of theIntellectual Capital in a Complex Business Landscape conference, Matera, Italy, 2010 where it was presented in a revised form.Also, thanks to the participants at the Waikato University management conference, Hamilton, New Zealand; the participantsat the Centre for Accounting, Governance and Sustainability research seminar and the University of South Australia. We aregrateful to Fiona Crawford, Macquarie University; and Julz Stevens, Knowledge Research for their research support.

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