Intellectual Capital Evaluation Methods in Business Systems

Abstract

In its background study the paper presents the role of intellectual capital in economic and social development. In this part authors present knowledge-based economy as a fundamental change in the economy both on global and regional/national level. Furthermore, it presents and analyses the function of intellectual capital within the business systems as an important and often crucial development factor. Therefore, the problem statement is how this function of intellectual capital is being measured and purpose of the research focuses on methods and models for measuring the value of intellectual capital. The authors used the method of general overview to extract the most significant quantitative and qualitative methods and approaches. The result was adopting four basic approaches for measuring intangible assets: Methods of direct evaluation of knowledge capital, Market capitalization methods, Return on assets method, and Scoring methods with a critical review of this methods (advantages and disadvantages). Apart from the above, an example of assessing the value of intangible assets of small and medium-sized enterprises from the countries of the European Economic Area is provided. In conclusion and important point is stressed: presented models have significant limitations because potential models should have a holistic character and include other factors, such as national and regional culture, narrower and wider political and legal environment, and others.