Enhancing policies and measurements of intellectual capital: macro, meso or micro analysis Knowledge is a major source of competitive advantage with intangible assets being more important than tangible ones. As innovative disruptions occur in all industries (e.g. manufacturing, technological, Industry 4.0, pharmaceutical, medical, etc.), intellectual capital is a primary creator of value (Obradovi c et al., 2021). Intellectual capital has many foci units of analysis varying from the individual, organizational and interorganizational to the constellation of networks of firms developing competitive advantage. Intellectual capital can be embedded within an individual as tacit knowledge or developed both through organization and interorganizational processes and through established strategic partnerships and alliances (Lee et al., 2017). Leveraging these knowledge drivers has been shown to differentiate successful firms from those that are left behind (Kianto et al., 2017;Bellucci et al., 2020).A human-level or micro-level approach to research into intellectual capital suggests that human expertise is superior to financial and physical assets, and expenditures on education and training are necessary. The micro-level focuses on both the broad interconnectedness of a workforce and individual competencies such as knowledge, skills and attributes of the employees. The intellectual capital is often tacit and is mobile as it can leave a firm. Although a source of strategic innovation, the difficult nature of tacit knowledge can be difficult to measure, assess or utilize (Saint-Onge, 1996;Konno and Schillaci, 2021). Research suggests that even if an individual may have valuable intellectual capital as tacit knowledge, they may not be willing to share their knowledge as it is a source of their power base within the firm.Firm-level or meso-level research into intellectual capital has been described as knowledge, information, intellectual property and experience utilized by a firm for a competitive advantage and resulted in innovation with a focus on value-added (Li et al., 2021). There are three components of meso-level intellectual capital research: human capital, structural capital and relational capital. The human capital is each individual in the workforce and their training and expertise, structural capital is the routines and explicit knowledge such as handbooks and databases, and relational capital focuses on the firm and all the relationships developed with customers, competitors, suppliers, trade associations or government bodies. Measurements of meso-level intellectual capital are: (1) direct (monetary value of intangible assets), (2) scorecard (using indicators or indices), (3) market capitalization (difference between a firm market capitalization and stockholder's equity) and (4) return on assets (ROA) (pre-tax earnings divided by average tangible assets).National level or macro-level research focusing on intellectual capital has been defined as all intangible resources available to a country, particularly all the...
