The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 6882

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The British Accounting Review

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Reections and projections: A decade of Intellectual Capital Accounting Research

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

Department of Accounting and Corporate Governance, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia University of Padua, Italy c The University of Sydney, Australia
b

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 7 February 2011 Received in revised form 21 April 2011 Accepted 25 May 2011 Keywords: Intellectual capital Accounting Research Scholarship Literature review

a b s t r a c t
The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the eld of Intellectual Capital Accounting Research (ICAR). The literature indicates that an organisational and business revolution is in progress concerning the need to understand the value of knowledge resources and how to manage them. The paper explores the eld of ICAR by examining a decade of published research since Petty and Guthries (2000) seminal paper on ICA, Intellectual capital literature review: Measurement, reporting and management as published in the Journal of Intellectual Capital. The paper has four specic contributions. The rst contribution is to identify the eld of scholarship associated with ICAR. The second is to provide a comprehensive picture of what has happened in the eld of ICAR over the past decade. Third, it provides evidence as to how and why the eld of ICAR is changing. Fourth, it highlights areas for future research and policy developments. From these four contributions our denition of Intellectual Capital Accounting (ICA) emerges. That is, ICA is an accounting, reporting and management technology of relevance to organisations to understand and manage knowledge resources. It can account and report on the size and development of knowledge resources such as employee competencies, customer relations, nancial relationships and communication and information technologies. Additionally, the analysis highlights several interesting patterns and worrying trends in the eld of ICAR. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Since the 1980s the worlds economy has rapidly changed from an industrial to a knowledge base. In the new knowledge economy wealth is created by developing and managing knowledge (Ricceri & Guthrie, 2009). These value creating knowledge resources are commonly referred to as intellectual capital (IC) (see Stewart, 1997, p. x). Value is no longer measured solely on the basis of nancial outcomes; rather the value of activities that develop knowledge resources must also be considered. Doing so helps us understand how employees, customers and activities contribute to value creation, leading us to the challenge of how to identify, measure and report on the value of our knowledge resources. Intellectual Capital Accounting (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, Intellectual Capital Accounting Research (ICAR): Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting (JHRCA) in 1996 and the Journal of

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: james.guthrie@mq.edu.au (J. Guthrie). 0890-8389/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bar.2012.03.004

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Intellectual Capital (JIC) in 2000. Additionally, other generalist accounting journals have shown interest in ICAR, publishing individual papers, and special issues. With over a decade of published research on ICA, its development can be followed by examining the journal published research literature. This is the purpose of our paper. As a starting point our paper considers the arguments of Petty and Guthries (2000) seminal paper on ICA, Intellectual capital literature review: Measurement, reporting and management as published in the Journal of Intellectual Capital and uses them as a foundation from which to build the review of the IC literature in the period since the paper was published. The Petty and Guthrie (2000) paper was chosen as the starting point because it appeared in the rst volume of the JIC and has to date been cited over 400 times.1 We develop a descriptive meta- analysis of over 400 ICAR journal articles, using a method previously 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 answers four inter related research questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. What is the scholarship eld of ICAR? What has happened in the eld of ICAR over the past decade? How and why is the eld changing? What is the future for ICAR?

Our paper demonstrates how ICAR has moved from what Petty and Guthrie (2000) described as stage one and stage two research, establishing and developing ICAR as a eld and legitimising ICA as an area of multi-disciplinary and multi-focused research. From this we argue a third stage of IC research is emerging based on a critical and performative analysis of IC practices in action. The descriptive analysis highlights several interesting patterns emerging such as the dominance of continental European research, the organisational basis of the majority of research and the importance of specialist journal outlets. When the various research method types were considered, commentary and normative policy papers remained the most popular research areas, rather than empirical papers. To some extent, these patterns represent wider patterning in other specialised accounting research literature (see also Broadbent & Guthrie, 2008; Guthrie & Murthy, 2009; Parker, 2005). The ndings of our paper outline how ICAR has developed a strong and continuing tradition, providing important insights that highlight areas for further development of research and policy. Additionally, our paper discusses several trends in the eld of ICA scholarship, for example, how generalist journals provide little space for ICAR. We also create a debate between the advantages and disadvantages of disseminating ICAR in specialised IC media such as conferences, journals, books and research monographs, 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 of contemporary ICAR literature, establishing what constitutes the eld of ICAR. Section three outlines our research method followed by a descriptive meta-analysis of the ICAR papers. Section four discusses issues associated with the eld 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 technology commenting: It is an interesting time to be active in the eld of research into intellectual capital (IC). In many respects, the community of intellectual capital researchers and practitioners is at an important juncture. The battle for acceptance of IC as a topic worthy of boardroom discussion and serious academic investigation has largely been won. The proliferation of conferences on intellectual capital, the myriad of books, working papers, and journal articles that grapple with the topic, and the large number of consulting rms offering products (services) centred on intellectual capital, are testament to this. Petty and Guthrie (2000) is seminal to the ICAR literature because they produced a detailed review of IC in the 1980s and 90s. They were the rst to review how the early interest in the new knowledge economy impacted organisations and how IC reporting and accounting practices developed. They comprehensively explored developments in Europe, North America and other countries. More importantly they wrote at a time when only a few specialised ICA academic networks, conferences or journals existed. Petty and Guthrie identied that ICAR focused on understanding how IC created value, leading to the perceived need to inform capital market and other stakeholders of the process. Additionally national governments (e.g. Denmark) and supranational 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 in investigating specic problems as they present at a rm (case study) and market (survey and experimental work) level.

http://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 contributions that are theoretical, methodological, or empirical in nature. Petty and Guthrie (2000) also outlined two stages in developing IC as a research eld. First-stage efforts typically focused on raising awareness as to why recognising and understanding the potential of IC towards creating and managing sustainable competitive advantage is important. Additionally, attempts to make the invisible visible were characterised by the creation of guidelines and standards. These early publications typically argued intellectual capital is something signicant and should be measured and reported, without referring to specic empirical research (Petty & Guthrie, 2000, p. 162). Most research conducted prior to the mid 1990s is considered rst stage. The second stage established IC research as a legitimate undertaking and gathered evidence in support of its further research (Petty & Guthrie, 2000; pp. 1556). 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 focussing on the how of IC were in their infancy at the time of Petty and Guthries (2000) literature review and dealt mainly with the process of measuring and managing IC from a top-down perspective. Since then ICAR has developed as a specialised research eld within accounting and management as evidenced by specialist academic conferences, books, monographs and publications in international specialist and generalist accounting academic journals. As a result, academics and practitioners, supported by public, private and third sector funding, have developed multi-disciplinary contributions using different perspectives, including sociology, psychology and economics. The rst and second stages contributed to a commonly accepted terminology of IC. Several classications of IC have been provided (Boedker, Mouritsen, & Guthrie, 2008; Guthrie, Petty, & Ricceri, 2007; Ricceri, 2008), resulting in the identication of three 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 organisation and its systems; and relational capital, the knowledge embedded in customers and other relationships external to the organisation. Emanating from these three components, we dene ICA as a management, accounting and reporting technology towards understanding, measuring and reporting knowledge resources such as employee competencies, customer relationships, brands, nancial relationships and information and communication technologies. It is important to distinguish ICA from intangible accounting which represents a more traditional approach that focuses only on those IC elements that are recognised by traditional nancial statements (e.g. brands, patents and copyrights). Two recent special issues on intangible accounting, rst 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 concentrate on intangible assets as dened by traditional nancial accounting and international standards (IAS 38 and IFRS 3) and do not recognise something as intangible, if it is not capitalised but recognised as an expense. However, in reviewing Skinners (2008a) arguments about intangibles, we refute outright his thesis that knowledgebased rms have been successful in capital markets and therefore current accounting practices are functioning effectively in relationship to IC. Skinners (2008a,b, pp. 215216) arguments are based on a review of a fairly narrow range of theoretical and empirical studies. In contrast, the views and experience of those with expertise in the real world of reporting intangibles and IC offering an alternative perspective (Striukova, Unerman, & Guthrie, 2008; Unerman, Guthrie, & Striukova, 2007). Since we argue that ICAR is a separate eld with its own specic focus, it would be useful for academics and practitioners to be informed of the progress made since Petty and Guthries seminal review of ICAR. We propose to answer the remaining three 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 used a 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 ve different stages. In the rst stage, the core research objectives were formulated, based on the work of Petty and Guthrie (2000). Based on this research objective, several classications/codes, boundaries and denitions were determined in order to select articles on ICA. The data set was restricted to a ten year period from 2000 to 2009. 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 recognised accounting journals and two specialist journals, JIC and JHRCA. The eight generalist accounting journals were selected because 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 of 2662) and selected articles containing aspects of ICAR, while eliminating non-ICAR articles. As a result we identied 423 articles focussing on ICAR. We then downloaded the PDF versions of these papers and stored them in an Endnote database complete with referencing details.

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The fourth stage pilot tested and adapted our classication system, based on the framework employed in Broadbent and Guthrie (2008), on a sample of papers. During this pilot stage two authors read the papers based on both abstracts and full text of the articles to discuss and make preliminary classications. This resulted in a slightly modied coding scheme as outlined in Table 1. Then one author manually coded all the papers while the second and third author checked the coding for consistency. Occasionally, when there was coding ambiguity, the authors discussed the contents of the article until they agreed on the same codes. The advantage of manual coding is when words 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 allowed the researchers to use implicit knowledge of the situation so they could effectively interpret idiomatic and metaphorical text and complex subordinate phrases. The following illustrates each of the individual elements as shown in Table 1 and provides examples from the ICAR literature. The rst criterion is Jurisdiction (A). It is divided into general papers that do not have an empirical base (A1) such as a broad literature 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 the papers that refer to an organisational setting there was: A1.1 International - Industry which included papers based on evidence from specic industries belonging to specic countries (e.g. Bozzolan, ORegan, & Ricceri, 2006; Caibano & Snchez, 2009); A1.2 International - Organisational which included papers that used evidence from one or more organisations belonging to either multiple industries or multiple countries (e.g. Chaminade & Johanson, 2003; Guthrie et al., 2007); A2.1 National - Industry which includes papers based on a specic industry belonging to one single country (e.g. Rowbottom, 2002; Yongvanich & Guthrie, 2005); A2.2 National - Organisational which included papers that used evidence from organisations belonging to a single country (e.g. Abeysekera & Guthrie, 2004; Bozzolan, Favotto, & Ricceri, 2003); and A3 which included papers based on a specic organisation (e.g. Cuganesan & Dumay, 2009; Ditillo, 2004). The second criterion is Organisational Focus (B). This was divided into six different elements (B1B6). In more detail, these elements were: B1 public listed organisations (e.g. Garca-meca, Parra, Larrn, & Martnez, 2005; Royal & ODonnell, 2008); B2
Table 1 Classication system for analysing ICA articles. A. Jurisdiction A1. Supra-national/international/comparative - general A1.1. Supra-national/international/comparative - industry A1.2. Supra-national/international/comparative - organisational A2. National general A2.1. National industry A2.2. National organisational A3. One organisation B. Organisational focus B1. Public listed B2. Private - SMEs B3. Private - others B4. Public sector B5. Not for prot B6. General/other C. Location C1. North America C2. Australasia C3. United Kingdom C4. Continental Europe C5. Other D. Focus of ICA literature D1. External reporting - ICD other reports and media D2. Auditing D3. Accountability and governance D4. Management control/strategy D5. Performance measurement D6. Other (including general) E. Research methods E1. Case/eld study/interviews E2. Content analysis/historical analysis E3. Survey/questionnaire/other empirical E4. Commentary/normative/policy E5. Theoretical: literature review/empirical F. ICA frameworks and models F0. No model proposed F1.0. Applies or considers previous models F1.1. 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; Snchez, Elena, & Castrillo, 2009); B5 not for prot (e.g. Boedker, Guthrie, & Cuganesan, 2005; Fletcher, Guthrie, Steane, Roos, & Pike, 2003). Other types of organisations that did not t the ve organisational types listed above, or that had no organisational focus were classied as: B6 general other (e.g. Pike & Roos, 2004). The third criterion is the Regional Focus of the study (C). This is divided into ve regions. C1 North America, including USA and Canada (e.g. Bontis, 2003; Chatzkel, 2003); C2 Australasia including Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia, such as China, 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; ORegan, ODonnell, Kennedy, Bontis, & Cleary, 2001); C4 Continental Europe including mainland European countries 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 classication, such as UAE and countries in Africa, South America etc (e.g. Firer & Williams, 2003; Jardn & Martos, 2009). The fourth criterion is Focus of ICAR Literature (D). There were six specic elements used: D1 external reporting (Bozzolan et al., 2003; van der Meer-Kooistra & Zijlstra, 2001); D2 auditing (Brcheler, Maijoor, & van Witteloostuijn, 2004); D3 accounting and governance (e.g. Cerbioni & Parbonetti, 2007; Holland, 2001); D4 management control and strategy (e.g. Mouritsen, Larsen, & Bukh, 2005; Sveiby, 2001); and D5 performance measurement (e.g. Andriessen, 2004; Moeller, 2009). All the articles that could not be coded into the above classications were coded as D6 other (e.g. Davison, 2008). The fth 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. Catass & Grjer, 2003; Tayles, Webster, Sugden, & Bramley, 2005). These rst three elements relate to empirical studies in nature. The next two elements relate to normative/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, Fernstrm, & Roos, 2005) and empirical research papers (e.g. Davila, 2005). Some research papers proved problematic to classify into an exact element as two or three research methods may have been used. In such cases, the article was coded based on the dominant research method used for primary data analysis. Finally, in the fth stage we utilised the classications to establish a range of descriptive statistics, allowing us to understand the patterns emerging from the reviewed articles. This provides the basis for our meta-analysis and discussion of the IC eld over the period in question. The following section outlines the meta-analysis and is followed by an open discussion of our ndings. 4. Meta-analysis The purpose of this section is to provide a meta-analysis of the ICAR articles selected and to answer our proposed question two: What has happened in the eld of ICAR over the past decade? and question three: How and why is the eld changing? We consider the spread of journals before turning to our classication 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 nding we note that most articles were part of IC special issues (e.g. AAAJ, AOS, CPA, and EAR), therefore reducing even further the inclusion of ICAR articles in generalist journals. The yearly pattern of published articles in Fig. 1 shows a spike in 2009 of articles in specialist and generalist journals. We note this increase is mainly associated with increased page numbers and an increase in the number of issues in the two specialist journals. Additionally, since 1999 we note a consistent ow of ICAR articles slightly increasing over time. Again, we reason the increased page numbers within specialist journals is the cause, not an acceptance of ICAR by the generalist journals. This patterning is consistent with Broadbent and Guthrie (2008) and Guthrie and Murthy (2009) who also identied the important role of specialised journals in publishing accounting research on specic topics. 4.1. Jurisdiction The data in Table 3 shows the jurisdiction of the papers emanated. Interestingly, we note how the majority of papers take a top down approach, examining ICAR from a general or industry perspective. Only 118 (28.8%) of the papers examine ICAR at an organisational level (A1.2, A2.2 and A3). This highlights how most ICAR tries to generalise ndings across all organisations as 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 is better: to understand IC as a concept and not only as an application of a pre-set idea and suggests that a performative approach to IC will enhance possibilities of developing new and interesting propositions about how IC works and is involved in organisational and social transformation (Mouritsen, 2006, p. 820). Thus the tendency to examine IC from above offers little understanding of how IC is implemented in practice (see also Dumay, 2009b). Others, such as Cuganesan and Dumay (2009, p. 1161), go further and claim more research is required at the organisational level to render visible the complexity of intellectual capital in order to make relationships between IC elements and value

J. Guthrie et al. / The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 6882 Table 2 ICA articles in specialists and generalist journals (200009). Journal name Specialist journals Journal of Intellectual Capital Journal of Human Resource Costing and Accounting Total ICA articles in specialist journals Generalist journals Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal European Accounting Review Accounting Organizations and Society Australian Accounting Review Management Accounting Research Accounting Forum British Accounting Review Critical Perspectives on Accounting Total ICA articles in generalist journals Total ICA articles in all journals Journal code JIC JHRCA ICA articles 297 48 345 22 17 11 8 5 5 3 7 78 423 Total articles 313 84 397 337 288 345 261 210 212 177 435 2265 2662

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% of ICA articles 70.2% 11.3% 81.6% 5.2% 0.4.0% 2.6% 1.9% 1.2% 1.2% 0.7% 1.7% 18.4% 100%

AAAJ EAR AOS AAR MAR AF BAR CPA

creation accessible to managers seeking to act on IC. Not doing so leaves ICA as an abstract construct which is difcult to implement without offering concrete examples of how ICA is applied inside an organisation. Moreover, acknowledging that the ICA discipline is rooted in practice is an important reminder of the need for researchers to keep their work focused and relevant (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 from general other (B6), the most commonly researched organisation is publicly listed companies (B1) with 97 articles. Considering publicly listed companies contribute only about 10% of the worlds GNP, it seems that only a narrow view of ICA is disseminated. There are very few articles on private companies, including SMEs, the public sector and not for prot organisations in the eld of ICAR. In examining publicly listed companies, as an organisational focus, it was found that many of the studies focused on the content, 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 disclosure and value creation (e.g. Dumay & Tull, 2007; Murthy & Abeysekera, 2007). The dominance of publicly listed companies might be ascribed to easy access to annual reports and other publicly available information. However, in reviewing these papers we did not nd a dominant focus. Several themes were found including: the use of the balanced scorecard (e.g. Bose & Thomas, 2007; OConnor & 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). Analysis of the organisational focus within B1 highlights the lack of studies with an internal focus on management IC practices. From an external perspective, over 90 studies focused on ICA using publicly listed companies.

Fig. 1. Specialist IC journal Pages 20009.

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Total A1. Supra-national/international/comparative - general A1.2. Supra-national/international/comparative - organisational A1.1. Supra-national/international/comparative - industry A2. National - general A2.1. National - industry A2.2. National - organisational A3. One organisation Grand total 176 20 17 14 98 56 42 423

% 41.6% 4.7% 4.0% 3.3% 23.2% 13.2% 9.9% 100%

The next most researched organisation is private and the types of organisations covered were banks, multinational rms, hotels, pharmaceuticals and others. On further investigation, what is of interest here is that of the 71 papers, only 7 dealt with the nancial impacts of IC on markets and prots. The remaining papers had a denite focus on IC management issues and strategy. 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 strategy in a Spanish bank. The least popular categories appear to be the public sector and not-for-prot. This is surprising considering that these sectors combined make up around 45% of GDP (Dumay, Guthrie, & Farneti, 2010), and that there are signicant differences in the organisational context of the public and not-for-prot sectors (Ball & Bebbington, 2008; Broadbent & Guthrie, 2008) and we 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 (Caibano & Snchez, 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 and heritage organisations (Donato, 2008), police departments (Collier, 2001), and regional clusters (Pyhnen & Smedlund, 2004). The range of organisational sites here is broad, but the extent to which there is a body of in-depth research into a particular organisational form is limited, meaning there are still ample research opportunities in this area. Also, when we analysed the ICA 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 (Catass, Ersson, Grjer, & Wallentin, 2007). Once again this might be an issue 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 for the selected journals the most active regions were: continental Europe with 193 (46%) papers, followed by Australasia with 74 (17%) and North America with 72 (17%). The United Kingdom, as a research site, and its authors have been relatively silent with only 41 (10%) papers. Not surprisingly, Continental Europe is in the forefront of ICAR because, since the 1990s, European authors, especially Scandinavian countries, have continuously published ICAR articles and books (e.g. Bukh & Johanson, 2003; Johanson, Mrtensson, & Skoog, 2001; Mrtensson, 2009). Continental European articles mainly focus on the European nations, indicating the strong tradition of IC research in Europe. Australasia has also produced a high number of articles and we argue that this is because Australasian researchers are inuenced by European academic traditions. For example, Australasian researchers were the fourth largest number of accepted papers at the 2010 EAA conference. Another area of interest is North American articles. When we separate Canada and America, a strong presence of Canadian studies 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 nancial accounting rather than ICA. Research has also been published in the period in other parts of the world including South Africa
Table 4 Organisational focus. Total B1. B2. B3. B4. B5. B6. Publicly listed Private - SMEs Private - others Public sector Not for prot General/other 97 18 54 28 7 219 423 % 22.9% 4.3% 12.8% 6.6% 1.7% 51.8% 100%

Grand total

J. Guthrie et al. / The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 6882 Table 5 Location. Total C1. C2. C3. C4. C5. North America Australasia United Kingdom Continental Europe Other 72 74 41 193 43 423 % 17.0% 17.5% 9.7% 45.6% 10.2% 100%

75

Grand total

(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 developing economies 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 has 160 papers. We also observe how more than two thirds of the published articles use a management control/strategy (D4) or an 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 in Table 6, representing 160 articles covering a wide range of management-related subjects. For instance, there were articles on the Balanced Scorecards (Flamholtz, 2003) and its use for managing IC (OConnor & Feng, 2005), managing IC in different organisational settings such as service organisations (Namasivayam & Denizci, 2006) and for the not-for-prot sector (Kong, 2007), and for mapping IC inside organisations (Hellstrm & Husted, 2004). A group of 46 articles did not have empirical content and tended to be either commentaries or policy statements similar to those referred to by Petty and Guthrie (2000) as rst stage contributions (e.g. Brennan & Connell, 2000; Garca-Ayuso, 2003; Roslender & Fincham, 2001). It is interesting to note that most of these papers were at the beginning of the decade and there were fewer at the end of the decade, supporting our nding of a move from normative commentary-type papers to empirically 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. The Table shows that commentary/normative/policy is the most commonly used, followed by surveys/questionnaire and case/ eld study/interviews. Content analysis of annual reports and historical analysis (E2) are also popular. Many papers have used a combination of interviews and surveys and are case studies that provide in-depth details of ICA within different organisations. 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 rst three categories (E1, E2 and E3) could be consolidated as an empirical theme and the next category (E4) can be classied as normative studies. The nal category, E5, connects theoretical to empirical studies. As we highlighted in Fig. 2, the trend over the last ten years is a steady increase in empirical work, while normative work has declined. It is encouraging to see more empirical work in this area, but there is a danger of over-dependence on empirical studies unsupported by theoretical underpinning. Additionally, it reinforces our earlier comments which highlight a failure to convert IC theory into practice caused by a concentration of top-down ostensive research instead of bottom-up performative research (see Dumay, 2009b, 2009c; Mouritsen, 2006).

Table 6 Focus of ICA literature. Total D1. D2. D3. D4. D5. D6. External reporting - ICD other reports and media Auditing Accountability and governance Management control/strategy Performance measurement Other (including general) 132 1 7 160 77 46 423 % 31.2% 0.2% 1.7% 37.8% 18.2% 10.9% 100%

Grand total

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Fig. 2. Empirical vs. normative ICA papers (200009).

4.6. ICAFrameworks Building on the discussion of research methods is our analysis of the use of ICA frameworks in the published research as outlined in Table 8. Three interesting facts are evidenced in the table. First, most papers (66.2%) do not address ICA frameworks again highlighting the inability to take an existing IC framework into consideration when researching IC. On the other hand, the ICAR literature has mainly concentrated on the development of new frameworks (22% of papers) compared with the utilisation of existing frameworks (11.8% of papers). On further investigation, we nd the trend to develop new ICA frameworks is waning in the later half of the decade as shown in Fig. 3. We believe this indicates that the ICAR eld is maturing and becoming entrenched as a discipline. It is developing into a legitimate eld within accounting and management as more researchers use existing frameworks to frame their research. 5. Discussion Leading on from our meta-analysis, we now turn to discussing our observations from a more qualitative perspective, building up to answering our nal 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 eld. Second, we discuss the implications of ICAR as a specialist research eld 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 eld because, as evidenced in our analysis of papers, we show how ICAR has developed a repertoire of published accounting research, promoting discourse via perspectives inuenced by different countries, organisations, research methods, etc. Furthermore, ICAR has matured from both the rst and second stages of development, as evidenced by the narrowing gap between developing new ICA frameworks and utilising existing frameworks and 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 takes a critical examination of IC in practice. The infancy of this critical third stage began with 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 and reinforcement with Mouritsens (2006) seminal AAAJ paper Problematising intellectual capital research: Ostensive versus performative IC and continued to develop in 2009 with the special edition of CPA (Vol. 20 No. 7) called Critical perspectives on intellectual capital (Mouritsen & Roslender, 2009; Roslender & Stevenson, 2009). Additionally, critical papers appeared in JIC by Dumay (2009a, 2009b), in AAAJ by Cuganesan and Dumay (2009) and in JHRCA by Roslender (2009). Thus the third stage was starting to gain considerable impetus and it will be interesting to see how it develops over the coming years.
Table 7 Research methods. Total E1. E2. E3. E4. E5. Case/eld study/interviews Content analysis/historical analysis Survey/questionnaire/other empirical Commentary/normative/policy Theoretical: literature review/empirical 82 46 103 152 40 423 % 19.4% 10.9% 24.3% 35.9% 9.5% 100.0%

Grand total

J. Guthrie et al. / The British Accounting Review 44 (2012) 6882 Table 8 ICA frameworks and models. Total F0. No model proposed F1.0. Applies or considers previous models F1.1. Proposes a new model Grand total 280 50 93 423 % 66.2% 11.8% 22.0% 100.0%

77

Since the 1990s, the community of ICA researchers has also grown through attracting newer scholars drawn to understanding IC in action (e.g. Chaminade & Roberts, 2003; Chang & Birkett, 2004; Dumay, 2009c) and by engaging in debates about dening 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 countries where the rst stage of ICAR was established, such as the European nations, Canada and Australia. However, we are heartened also by the increased input from the new economic giants such as China and India. These two countries alone hold nearly half of the worlds 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 resources into 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 with over 500 Chinese SMEs, rivalling the scope and scale of seminal IC projects such as the Meritum Project (2002) or the development of the Danish IC guidelines (Mouritsen et al., 2003). Additionally, Hong KongPolytechnic University has funded a 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 ICA and knowledge management (KM) journals is increasing. According to Serenko and Bontis (2009) there are 20 journals dedicated 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 special editions of generalist research journals. Through the 2000s and onwards, the three leading international interdisciplinary accounting research conferences, the European Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference (IPA), AAAJs Asia Pacic Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting Conference (APIRA), and the Critical Perspectives on Accounting Conference (CPAC), have offered greater opportunities for ICA researchers to disseminate and receive feedback on their work. Adding to the list of generalist accounting conferences 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 20009.

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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 (ICICKM 2010) 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", 1517 June, Tampere, Finland. Even with continued progress in the development of ICAR dissemination, many ICA researchers still feel excluded from the generalist accounting research community for two reasons. First, is the lack of recognition of specialist ICA journals in the accounting and business school rankings. As Serenko and Bontis (2009, p. 4) attest, The academic eld of KM/IC is relatively young but growing at an accelerated rate. Unfortunately, the few academic journals that do currently exist do not have a long legacy, which would support their recognition in general management-wide rankings. Second is the apparent bias against ICAR and its related theories and research methodologies exhibited by editors and editorial boards members of many socalled highly rated generalist accounting journals. This is because these journals and their editors see the problem of IC as a nancial (intangibles) accounting problem (e.g. Skinner, 2008a), rather than the problem of trying to understanding how intellectual capital is linked to value creation (e.g. Mouritsen et al., 2001). Although according to our research this appears to be 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 groupings such as ICA researchers opting to retreat behind closed doors, seeking their own scholarly groupings. Subsequently many only attend 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 generalist conferences. As Serenko and Bontis (2009, p. 6) attest: .scholars striving to convey their ndings face two options. First, they may submit their manuscripts to one of the KM/IC-specic outlets that will give their works the best exposure to a target audience. Regrettably, if the rankings of these journals are low or non-existent, which is a present situation with KM/IC journals, the quality of this research may be questioned by colleagues, promotion committees and granting agencies. Second, KM/IC scholars may submit their papers to well-ranked non-KM specic outlets. However, despite the recognition of research quality and impact on a future academic career, this work may potentially remain unnoticed by the general KM/IC community that may tend to read mostly KM/IC-specic outlets. Unashamedly, our paper focuses on refereed journal papers as they are regarded as the most highly valued accounting academic publications (Parker, Guthrie, & Gray, 1998). In the last decade the extent and quality of research activity has become a key focus for judging academic and university performance. In doing this, various national research assessment exercises have been undertaken (Ashton et al., 2009; Northcott & Linacre, 2010), which only in part rely upon published journal quality rankings. In Australia, there is the government backed Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), whilst the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) has produced its own list. In the United Kingdom, the inuential ABS rankings list has recently decided to remove JIC and JHRCA. In Australia, the 2010 ERA ranked JIC as a B and JHRCA as a C. These lists are becoming more inuential in determining authors preferences for publishing and researching (Northcott & Linacre, 2010) and if JIC and JHRCA 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): [.] relying on journal rankings to capture research quality, especially in the accounting and nance, a practice seemingly on the increase in many UK institutions, and also in the rankings of business schools produced by newspapers such as the Financial 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 journal quality rankings, we should be developing alternative spaces for academic discourse. Rather than stiing innovation and new 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 how many generalist technical accounting research conferences and journals privilege contemporary accounting for nancial intangibles and positivistic research. However, a similar environment existed with specialist groups such as accounting history scholars in the 1960s and 1970s. These scholars persevered and eventually penetrated generalist accounting to become recognised (Parker & Guthrie, 2009). Second, academics have limited time and travel budgets; therefore specialist researchers allocate their scarce resources to their specialist conferences. However, this perpetuates the risk of becoming disconnected from the generalist accounting

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research community. It does not provide a defensible rationale for failing to submit more research to generalist journals. By not 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 and conferences and not concentrate exclusively on specialised ICAR avenues. The generalist accounting journals and conferences present a signicant pathway towards ICA researchers engaging with other accounting research colleagues. ICA researchers must not retreat into a specialist research ghetto. By displaying their wares to a wider community of accounting research peers, ICA researchers join them in contributing to developing contemporary policy and discourse. By demonstrating how exciting and relevant their research is to younger and newer scholars they contribute to attracting and developing the next generation of ICA researchers. With its peers, AAAJ and APIRA stand ready to assist the specialist ICAR community in this important undertaking (Guthrie & Parker, 2006). 6. Conclusion - the future of ICAR The rst aim of our paper was to answer the question What is the scholarship eld of ICAR? We achieved this by reviewing the seminal Petty and Guthrie (2000) literature review and establishing ICA as a specialist eld of research. More importantly we witnessed how the rst two stages of ICAR have matured and how a third stage of ICAR was taking hold focussing on critically examining ICAR in practice. Next we addressed the questions: What has happened in the eld of ICAR over the past decade? and How and why is the eld changing? utilising a meta-analysis of the articles that focus on ICAR for a ten year period from 2000 to 2009 in ten selected journals. Our study shows that there is an increase in research in the eld of ICA, with focus on developed countries, public listed companies and on management control and strategy areas, and within recent years more empirical studies. Next we advocate some ways forward in answering the nal 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 accounting research community. The potential to do so has never been greater as the generalist accounting journals have recently opened the doors to special editions and have increased the space available for articles of all types. Additionally generalist accounting conferences do not shy away from accepting ICA papers for presentation. In reality it is up to us as the ICA researchers to take our work to the generalist accounting community to receive feedback which informs us of the reasons papers may not be accepted. We should be leading the way by offering our ndings to the generalist journals and conferences and participating in their debates. Second, we advocate that the specialist journals should continue to promote acceptance of ICAR by openly seeking critical views on ICA as a eld of research. There fore we want to emphasise the need to continue developing critical ICAR research as part of the third stage as important. The special edition titled Intellectual capital: becoming critical in JIC (Vol. 7 No.1), the special edition of CPA (Vol. 20 No. 7) called Critical perspectives on intellectual capital is evidence of how both specialist and generalist journals have contributed to the third stage. Unfortunately, up until just recently, we have not participated in many of these debates within our own community, which leads us open to the criticism that our research eld is a closed shop and we are unwilling to hear the opposing arguments of other accounting researchers. Only by confronting each others ideas in open discourse can we move forward. ICA researchers should become the catalyst of the discourse rather than turn away from it. Thus, in conclusion we nd that there are signicant omissions in the research agenda in both the specialist and generalist agendas. On the other hand, we see plentiful evidence of a counter-offensive to the capital market intangible research that dominates nancial 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 in the interpretive, qualitative and critical traditions researching various aspects of ICA. Through our research, we are establishing bridgeheads of published research addressing subjects of emerging importance to world communities, embracing change and engaging in being critical of experiences in the eld. We welcome the task of grappling with the complexities of organisational and institutional worlds rather than repeatedly modelling them and conceiving from them abstract positivistic theory. The future research directions discussed above are about opening up new elds of enquiry, addressing neglected issues and consolidating the eld of ICAR. We must challenge the status quo, employ innovative methodologies, experiment with the novel and take risks. We encourage you to watch the ICA space in the next decade for more critical eld studies which will provide 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 of journals was restricted to ten. Results could vary if more journals were scrutinised and if other forms of scholarly activities were included (e.g. monographs, conference papers, books, book chapters, PhD theses, etc). Second, although the coding process was performed systematically with utmost care to allow consistency, there could be errors of omission and coding could have also been affected by coder bias. Third, in spite of using previous research to select the coding criteria so as to make the classication mutually exclusive and exhaustive, the addition of other and other general classications may have camouaged some interesting ndings. In closing, Parker and Guthrie (2009) argue that consistent with its historical tradition, the accounting and the accounting research disciplines must remain resolutely pluralist if we are to have any signicant and relevant future at all. The range of topics studied, and the range of theoretical perspectives adopted, is extremely broad. Arguably, this is a highly desirable feature that should be protected against narrow-minded approaches to the evaluation of research (Ashton et al., 2009, p. 207).

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Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Michael Jones, joint editor of BAR, the participants at the 2009 BAA conference, where the paper was presented by James Guthrie as a plenary, for their insights and helpful feedback and the participants of the Intellectual 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 participants at the Centre for Accounting, Governance and Sustainability research seminar and the University of South Australia. We are grateful to Fiona Crawford, Macquarie University; and Julz Stevens, Knowledge Research for their research support. References
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