Human Interaction: The Critical Source of Intangible Value

In this theoretical, empirical and occasionally speculative paper we argue that human interaction is the critical source of intangible value in the intellectual age. This argument is supported with some perceptual evidence on the dimensions of intellectual capital (IC) from the Irish ICT sector. Key findings are that almost two thirds of organizational value is perceived to be intellectual and that half of this IC value is perceived to stem directly from the people dimension. Drawing on the system/lifeworld distinction in Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action we claim that the dominant tenets of market and hierarchy are changing in both nature and scope in an increasingly knowing‐intensive economy. We argue strongly that these tenets must be complemented with ideas of community and lifeworld that place human interaction at the center of a more enlightened economic and social equation.

[1]  E. Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier , 2000 .

[2]  M. Polanyi.  Personal Knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy , 1959 .

[3]  P. Baumard.  Tacit Knowledge in Organizations , 1999 .

[4]  K. Lyytinen,et al.  Exploring the intellectual structures of information systems development: A social action theoretic analysis , 1996 .

[5]  G. Krogh,et al.  Future Research into Knowledge Management , 1998 .

[6]  Nick Bontis,et al.  Perceptions of Intellectual Capital: Irish Evidence , 2001 .

[7]  Karl-Erik Sveiby.  The new organizational wealth , 1997 .

[8]  J. Spender.  Pluralist Epistemology and the Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm , 1998 .

[9]  J. Habermas.  Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action , 1990 .

[10]  W. Schluchter.  14. Modes of Authority and Democratic Control , 1987 .

[11]  Brian Leavy,et al.  The Concept of Learning in the Strategy Field , 1998 .

[12]  Lars Bo Henriksen,et al.  Philosophical foundations for a critical evaluation of the social impact of ICT , 2002, J. Inf. Technol..

[13]  M. Polanyi.  Chapter 7 – The Tacit Dimension , 1997 .

[14]  N. Luhmann.  Essays On Self-Reference , 1990 .

[15]  J. Brown,et al.  Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation , 1991 .

[16]  Philip O'Regan,et al.  Intellectual capital: a Habermasian introduction , 2000 .

[17]  B. Olsson.  Measuring Personnel through Human Resources Accounting Reports: A Procedure for Management of Learning. The Hospital Sector in Northwest Stockholm , 1999 .

[18]  J. Roos,et al.  Intellectual Capital: Navigating in the New Business Landscape , 1997 .

[19]  Edward Lorenz,et al.  Trust and Economic Learning , 1998 .

[20]  Gregory G. Dess,et al.  Measuring organizational performance in the absence of objective measures: The case of the privately-held firm and conglomerate business unit , 1984 .

[21]  Philip O'Regan,et al.  The Structual Dimensions of Intellectual Capital: Emerging Challenges for Management and Accounting , 2005 .

[22]  Michael G. Shields.  Translator's Introduction , 2001 .

[23]  Nico Stehr,et al.  Modern German Sociology , 1987 .

[24]  J. H. Davis,et al.  An Integrative Model Of Organizational Trust , 1995 .

[25]  J. Habermas.  The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity , 1985 .

[26]  N. Brennan,et al.  Intellectual Capital: Current Issues and Policy Implications , 2000 .

[27]  A. Giddens,et al.  Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order , 1994 .

[28]  B. Wernerfelt,et al.  DETERMINANTS OF FIRM PERFORMANCE: THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF ECONOMIC AND ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS , 1989 .

[29]  J. Spender.  Making knowledge the basis of a dynamic theory of the firm , 1996 .

[30]  N. Luhmann,et al.  The modernity of science , 1994 .

[31]  Paul Duguid,et al.  Chapter 7 – Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation* , 2000 .

[32]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage , 1998 .

[33]  E. Penrose.  The theory of the growth of the firm twenty-five years after , 1960 .

[34]  J. Habermas.  Theory of Communicative Action , 1981 .

[35]  R. Grant,et al.  Knowledge and the firm: Overview , 1996 .

[36]  David O'Donnell,et al.  Habermas, Critical Theory and Selves-Directed Learning , 1999 .

[37]  Richard J. Bauer,et al.  Knowledge and the firm , 1999 .

[38]  Leif Edvinsson,et al.  Some perspectives on intangibles and intellectual capital 2000 , 2000 .

[39]  N. Bontis,et al.  Intellectual capital and business performance in Malaysian industries , 2000 .

[40]  A. Honneth,et al.  The Dialectics of Rationalization: An Interview with Jürgen Habermas , 1981, Telos.

[41]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust , 1998 .

[42]  N. Bontis.  Assessing knowledge assets: a review of the models used to measure intellectual capital , 2001 .

[43]  P. Adler.  Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism , 2001 .

[44]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  Enabling Knowledge Creation: How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge and Release the Power of Innovation , 2000 .

[45]  Jan Mouritsen,et al.  Intellectual capital and the 'capable firm': narrating, visualising and numbering for managing knowledge , 2001 .

[46]  N. Bontis.  Intellectual capital: an exploratory study that develops measures and models , 1998 .

[47]  I. Nonaka.  A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation , 1994 .

[48]  H. Maturana,et al.  Autopoiesis and Cognition , 1980 .

[49]  F. Blackler.  KNOWLEDGE AND THE THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONS: ORGANIZATIONS AS ACTIVITY SYSTEMS AND THE REFRAMING OF MANAGEMENT* , 1993 .

[50]  D. Stark.  Ambiguous Assets for Uncertain Environments: Heterarchy in Postsocialist Firms , 2009 .

[51]  W. Arthur,et al.  Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy , 1996 .