News

This section shows mainly information on new publications. A more comphrehensive news section is available in Danish at the Danish version of the site. If you are able to read Danish it is therefore suggested that you go to the Danish site.  

Disclosure of information on intellectual capital

By Per Nikolaj Bukh, Christian Nielsen, Peter Gormsen & Jan Mouritsen; Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 2005, Vol. 18, No. 6, side 713-732. The purpose of this article is to examine whether information on intellectual capital (non-financial information on knowledge based resources) is disclosed in Danish IPO prospectuses. Further, to analyse whether this voluntary disclosure has changed in the period from 1999 to 2001 and to analyse what factors can explain the amount of disclosure in the prospectuses. The paper uses content analysis to compile a measure of disclosure on each prospectus and statistical analysis to test whether there is an association between disclosure and company type, the existence of managerial ownership before the IPO, the size of the company or the age of the firm. Based on statistical analysis, it is concluded that the extent of managerial ownership prior to the IPO and industry type affects the amount of voluntary intellectual capital disclosure, while company size and age do not affect disclosure. The results are interpreted in the light of the increasing importance of disclosing information on value drivers, strategy and intellectual capital to the capital market and constitute a contribution to the ongoing debate on corporate reporting practices. Since information on intellectual capital is already disclosed in IPO prospectuses this reporting form can be used as inspiration when an intellectual capital report is developed. The results also indicate that companies and their advisers believe that this type of information is important in the capital market's assessment of the company's value. Further, it is suggested that intellectual capital reports should be read in the context of the firm's strategy in the same manner as an prospectus is read. The article can be downloaded here.

Re-examining the cause-and-effect principle

There seems to be a wide variety of methods in how organizations apply the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) concept in practice and how it is interpreted in the literature. Consequently, it is not quite clear what the core features of BSC, or its variants, are and if all its variants are equally effective in producing expected outcomes. Moreover, the usefulness of BSC as a practical theory has been questioned by referring to some of its assumptions, especially the cause-and-effect relationship. In a recent article Per Nikolaj Bukh and Teemu Malmi re-examine the cause-and-effect principle, which can be seen as one of the corner-stones of the BSC. Further, they outline alternative ways to apply cause-and-effect in practice, both analytically and organizationally. To facilitate research on BSC, some of the contingencies that may limit or support the usefulness of the cause-and-effect concept is outlined. These include strategy, organization, environment and communication related issues. The article has been published in Northern Lights in Accounting (J. Mourtisen & S. Jönsson eds., Stockholm: Liber). Download the article here.

Intellectual Capital - Establishing a field of Practice

Evidence of recent years’ increasing interest in knowledge can be observed not only in management literature but also in companies. The introduction of new views has taken place under headings as knowledge management and intellectual capital.  Several new methods and techniques have been introduced involving many different management areas. A new book edited by Per Nikolaj Bukh, Karina Skovvang Christensen and Jan Mouritsen has been published in 2005 ny Palgrave Macmillan. See more information here or read a sample chapter from the book. The book has been reviewed by the Danish financial paper Børsen, see the review here.

Intellectual Capital versus Balanced Scorecard

Together with Jan Mouritsen and Heine T. Larsen, Per Nikolaj Bukh has published the article "Dealing with the Knowledge Economy: Intellectual Capital versus Balanced Scorecard" in Journal of Intellectual Capital, vol. 6, no. 1. 2005: The paper compares balanced scorecard and intellectual capital and finds important differences between their theoretical underpinnings which suggest that the breath of indicators will work differently in organisations. Analysing texts about balanced scorecard and intellectual capital the paper discusses not the obvious similarities – that they are both integrated performance management systems – but more four aspects of them: Strategy organisation, management and indicators. The paper suggests that the very different notions of strategy that underpin the balanced scorecard and the intellectual capital approach makes such comprehensive performance management systems behave in very different ways – the difference between a tightly coupled and a loosely coupled system accounts for this. The paper’s analysis shows how the two models assume how indicators work in an organisational systems and concludes that the differences are significant and that therefore there are considerable differences in how a system of indicators may work in the context of balanced scorecard compared with the context of intellectual capital.  The article can be downloaded here