Intellectual capital of South Africa: a comparison with Poland and Romania

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to uncover the national intellectual capital (NIC) of South Africa by making comparisons with Poland and Romania. Design/methodology/approach Based on a database of an NIC measurement model spanning 2001-2015, this study plotted the development trend of the NIC and its component capitals – human, market, process and renewal capitals. Their correlations with GDP per capita (ppp) (GDP hereinafter) were also presented. Findings The NIC of South Africa is lower than that of both Poland and Romania. Except for the increase of its human capital together with its GDP, the other capitals have lower relevance. Poland experienced highly correlated growth for its NIC and GDP, shedding light for South Africa. The qualitative findings are also reported. Research limitations/implications The IMD database carries South African data only for the African continent. Therefore, this paper cannot cover other countries from the continent. Practical implications There are three implications from both the quantitative and qualitative analyses: initiate national transformation from the two core issues of education and health; invite and provide attractive incentives for South African returnees from abroad and members of local private sectors to take part in the national transformation efforts; and learn from the NIC development pattern of Poland and Romania by investing in market capital and process capital as soon as possible for faster results. Social implications The research findings of this paper unveil the root of the social problems in South Africa, including education, health, high unemployment and so on. Suggestions are provided for mid-term and long-term potential solutions. Originality/value This paper demonstrates the value of an NIC in the economically successful Poland whose growth and GDP growth occurred at a similar pace.

National Intellectual Capital in European Union Countries in 2013-2017

“…Those attempts to gauge the intellectual capital of Sweden provided an impetus for extending the research into intellectual capital on a country level. Other contributors to the development of the NIC concept include, among others: Pasher (1999), Malhotra (2003), Bounfour (2003), Bontis (2004), Pasher, Andriessen and Stam (2005), Sachar (2005 and2007), Hervas-Oliver and Dalmau-Porta (2007), and Lin (2018).…”

A Hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Technique to Evaluate Regional Intellectual Capital: Evidence from China

“…For example, Rossi et al [17] proposed that the RIC should be considered from the perspective of human capital, structural capital, and relational capital based on previous theories. Lin [18] divided IC into human, market, process, and innovation capital. Incze and Vasilache [19] assessed the level of IC in Romanian IT MNCs and SMEs from three perspectives: human capital, structural capital, and relational capital.…”

“…The most important component of RIC is human capital, which is generally accepted by scholars [4,9,10,18,[43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. Measuring and evaluating knowledge in human capital is a very important and interesting area [52].…”

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