Recognition and Measurement of Intellectual Resources: The Accounting-Relating Challenges of Intellectual Capital

The key to competitive success is likely to be the ability to create, leverage, and develop specialised knowledge and intellectual resources. This new reality presents both challenges and opportunities for accounting, a discipline which has traditionally found it difficult to deal with the recognition and measurement issues surrounding intangible assets. This paper makes two contributions to the emerging literature on intellectual capital. Firstly, it offers some preliminary results of a study of the drivers and generators of intellectual capital. Secondly, it posits a theoretical/ methodological approach to intellectual capital based upon Habermas’ concept of communicative action, a concept that allows the premium attaching to the human and dynamic elements of organisations to be accentuated.