Knowledge assets assessment strategies: organizational value, processes, approaches and evaluation architectures

Purpose – Companies coping with global business are called more and more to lead their transformation into intelligent organizations, i.e. organizations able to leverage their intellectual capital to achieve their business objectives and envision new development paths. This paper, assuming that the organizational intellectual capital corresponds to the knowledge assets attributed to a company, aims to discuss the organizational value, the processes, the approaches and the evaluation architectures of the knowledge asset assessment strategies.

Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of a literature review, first the sub-processes of the assessment are discussed, highlighting the main features of the assessment of knowledge assets as well as the twofold nature of the knowledge asset assessment, distinguishing between stock and flow perspective of the evaluation. Second, the managerial reasons at the basis of the implementation of measurement systems for disclosing organizational knowledge resources are discussed. Finally, according to a distinction between the assessment approaches and the evaluation architectures, four main knowledge asset assessment strategies are defined.

Findings – Despite a number of models to assess intellectual capital being proposed, they highlighted a need for clarification of their strategic focus. With the aim of filling this gap, the main finding of the paper is to clarify relevant issues providing an organic, literature review-based and coherent framework about the knowledge assets assessment strategies.

Originality/value – The identification of these strategies not only contributes to advance the theory of knowledge asset assessment, but also provides insights to managers to better define and implement models and approaches for measuring organizational knowledge resources. Especially they support managers in choosing and arranging critical information for defining the most suitable decisions and actions concerning the effective management and development of a company's intellectual capital.