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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand whether Management Commentary (MC) can cover the information needs about underreported company intangibles in accounting traditionalist countries such as Germany and Italy. Furthermore, this work would like to contribute towards an improvement of the managerial culture on intangible resources disclosure and to stimulate the consciousness of the need for a new regulatory policy in accounting. Design/methodology/approach – Focusing on the current regulation on MC and taking into account its hard and soft components, both in Italy and in Germany, we have carried out a semantic analysis together with a manual content one so to find out and to compare specifications for intangibles related disclosure in MC. The authors have decided to follow a semantic approach because of the different languages of the analysed documents, that in any case need to be considered under a cultural perspective of provenience, trying to give more effectiveness to the cross comparison. Findings – The results have shown that just a part of the intangibles is covered by the regulations of MC and that Germany and Italy follow, mainly, the same approach to MC. Practical implications – The findings highlight the similarities and differences between what the authors need to report on intangibles according to specifications in Italy and Germany. Originality/value – The authors reveal the approach that a country with rather conservative accounting can follow balancing regulatory approach and needs to disclose information about intangibles without a specific report on that. The authors identify the need for a new policy that can enable the development of intangibles disclosure culture.

Purpose -Dealing with intellectual capital (IC), the purpose of this paper is to provide a strategic tool for management activities in knowledge-based organizations. In particular, in the contribution, an integrated framework for intangibles' representation, evaluation and control in Science Parks is developed. Design/methodology/approach -Starting from a review of the main instruments for measuring intangible resources in an organization, an integrated model of IC for Science Parks is formulated. Findings -The paper demonstrates that Science Parks are big repositories of knowledge but they are neither familiar with the IC management nor with the use of methodologies functional for the resources representations and for the variations dynamics of their value. Thereby it answers to questions related to the IC process representation, responding to managerial exigencies and to measurability and repeatability as strategic activities for business running. Originality/value -Unlike the great number of studies on IC that formulate objective metrics of the value of firms' intangible assets, the paper presents a model not to describe but to shape processes in a knowledge-based organization and to achieve and communicate results both for management and for increasing transparency of communication with external stakeholders.

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Knowledge is primarily considered as powerful value producer. The dynamic relationship of university and society starts with the economic exploitation of research results, with the intention, on the one hand, to safeguard the equilibrium of financial resources to support academic activity on the other hand with the intention to sustain society and more specifically stakeholders' interests. University and precisely its departmental structure are increasingly involved in the implementation and improvement of strategies focusing on technological transfer and on the activity of managing internal intangible resources. This study, after considering the logic that inspires or should inspire models for the evaluation of knowledge creation and accountability through the intangible assets of academic departments and research centres, illustrates empirically the situation concerning the diffusion of immaterial resource management tools in a relevant research area in Italy.