Towards a Model for Creating Comparable Intellectual Capital Reports

Since the mid 1990s various concepts of intellectual capital reports have been elaborated and their descriptions can be found in both scientific and management literature. Their major task is the attempt to cover intangible assets within an organization or firm and to illustrate the immense resources, which may be used to attain competitive advantages. A major drawback of all presented intellectual capital reports is their non-comparability due to the diversity of conceptions. Thus it is not possible to compare and evaluate the results of different firms within an industry using diverse concepts of intellectual capital reports. This paper presents an approach, which allows the creation of comparable intellectual capital reports based on so called meta-indicators (or benchmarks). By using the meta-modelling approach the intellectual capital reporting (ICR) benchmark framework and a top-down procedure model (the intellectual capital reporting (ICR) step model) are outlined and discussed in detail.