Research Methods to Visualise the Complexity of Intellectual Capital

Within the IC literature, an increasing number of calls have been made to acknowledge and empirically investigate the complexity of IC in organisational settings. This paper presents a research method to visualise the complex inter-relationships between the various IC elements as enacted in organisations. It draws on the Cynefin framework (Kurtz and Snowden, 2003; Snowden, 2005; Snowden, 2006) and utilises both qualitative and quantitative data to provide context and explanation about the interrelationships between IC elements and value creation within a particular organisational setting.