Research On The Relationship Between Intellectual Capital And Business Performance

Along with the arrival of knowledge-based economy ages, Intellectual Capital (IC) has gradually replaced the traditional factors to become the strategically important resource. Compared with physical resources, IC is core resource in establishing the advantage power of enterprise. Against the uncertainty and complexity of exterior circumstance, how to develop IC to obtain and maintain competitive advantage in business has always been a hot and difficult issue in strategic management research. Many scholars, at home or abroad, has brought the main effect model, buffer effect model and moderate effect model to discuss the relationship between IC and business performance. Although academia has done lots of research jobs in the fields of IC and business performance, which has led to many leading theories and meaningful achievements. But in short, scholars have not arrived at any agreement in the relationship between IC and business performance yet. However, despite of large quantities of domestic and foreign scholars studies, the inconsistence of IC concepts and measurement methods leads to the disunity of empirical results. And scholars’ studies mostly focused on high-tech business while rarely focused on traditional industries, not to mention the comparative analysis between different industries. In addition, our country is currently in the transition of economic society and new policy may occur at any time. So for the management, they must consider the specific external environment when choosing strategy and make the strategic planning accordingly.According to the analyses above, this article tests the relationship between IC and business performance using data of A-share companies. First of all, clarify the concept and composition of IC and through reviewing and sorting out the existing research. Secondly, discusses the relationship between IC and business performance among different industries. Thirdly, discusses the moderating role of environment on the relationship between IC and business performance. Through the empirical analysis, we have come to the conclusion:(1)IC is positively associated with business performance. But there exists great difference in different industries. Compared with traditional industries, IC has greater influence on business performance in the new and high technology industries. However, at present, physical capital still plays a dominant role to the promotion of enterprise performance in China. Managers should pay more attention to the role of IC in the future management practices.(2)Human Capital positively influences business performance. Different structures of the IC have different effects on the corporate performance. Specifically, the human capital has a positive effect on the corporate performance, but the structure capital and relational capital does not have a significant positive effect for all industries. For different industries, the key IC structure that can improve the corporate performance is different. Enterprise management should reasonably allocate the IC by analyzing their own specific industry.(3)The relationship between IC and business performance is influenced by the environment. Environmental munificence positively moderate the relationship between Structure Capital/Relational Capital and business performance. Environmental munificence negatively moderate the relationship between Human Capital and business performance. Environmental dynamism negatively moderate the relationship between Human Capital and business performance. Environmental dynamism positively moderate the relationship between Structure Capital and’ business performance. Environmental complexity negatively moderate the relationship between Customer Capital/Human Capital and business performance.From theoretical and empirical results, the results support the view that IC plays important role in the business performance. And they also support that in different environment contexts business should adopt different IC investment, management strategies to enhance business performance.