Intellectual Capital of a University as a Component of Its Rating Assessment: Opportunities for Management Accounting

Abstract

Intellectual capital is a relatively new term in economics. It includes knowledge, skills, production experience, patents, databases, software, trademarks used in the activities of economic entities. Intellectual capital, first of all, is inherent in knowledge-intensive activities, in which a significant place belongs to the activities of universities. Despite the unfavorable geopolitical situation, universities in our country remain participants in Russian and international rankings, based primarily on data on their intellectual capital. At the same time, not only its financial, but also its image component depends on the place of a university in the ranking. In this regard, objective disclosure of information about the intellectual capital of universities becomes an urgent task. The formation of ratings is currently carried out under conditions of presentation of incomparable data, which is explained by the lack of an adequate information base for their formation. In this regard, in the presented study, the management accounting system of universities is positioned as an information base for preparing information about their intellectual capital. It is proposed to include the block “University Intellectual Capital” in the management accounting framework of Russian universities, which accumulates information about its components - human, client and organizational capital. The study substantiates a system of indicators to be included in this block both at the stage of formation of university management accounting and during its subsequent development. Adding the “University Intellectual Capital” block to the university management accounting system will not only increase the reliability of information about the university’s intellectual capital, but will also ensure greater objectivity in conducting rating assessments of their activities. In addition, this solution will allow reformatting existing information flows of universities, avoiding their repeated duplication.