Open access
NEGATIVE INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
Jan FAZLAGIĆ1
Economy - Marketing: Looking for New Ideas
Publication language: Polish
Journal article
Transformations No. 1-2 (76-77) 2013, Publication date: 31 May 2013
Abstract The main purpose of accounting has always been delivering up-to-date , reliable and objective information regarding the assets and liabilities in a firm. The birth of the industrial era coincided with the development of modern accounting. In industrial enterprises the majority of assets were tangible items such as land, machinery, industrial tools, raw materials etc. Only on the occasion of sale of an enterprise were intangible assets accounted for – in the form of so called “goodwill”. Accounting principles reflected the principles of economic theories which, until recently sternly emphasized the rationality of the economic actors. Thanks to recent discoveries in the field of behavioral economics, the myth of the rational decision maker has been abolished. The consequences of this paradigm change have reached many fields of economic studies, but so far have not affected the theories of intellectual capital measurement. This paper aims at filling the gap and bringing to light the obvious implications for the measurement of intangible assets in organizations. The concept of “negative intellectual capital” implies that certain intangible assets have an intrinsic negative value which cannot be easily compensated for by the positive value e.g. the negative value of mistreated customers cannot be offset by the equivalent of satisfied customers. Moreover, many intangible assets cease to manifest their value until they reach a critical mass. Therefore, the measurement of intellectual capital may not be performed through on-pole measurement scales and linear functions. The author presents a series of postulates which support the theory of negative intellectual capital understood as an autonomous component of the total intellectual capital in a firm.
Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny w Poznaniu, Akademia Finansów i Biznesu Vistula w Warszawie
E-mail: jan.fazlagic@ue.poznan.pl