ntellectual Capital Management Practices in Malaysian Private Hospitals

Abstract

Intellectual capital has emerged as an indispensable element for enhancing productivity and sustaining performance of organizations in this knowledge-based economy. In the healthcare industry, intellectual capital forms the basis for continuing innovation and subsequent performance. Hence, the management of hospitals needs sound intellectual capital management in order to ensure sustainability. Moreover, the activities of hospitals generally depend more on intangible resources such as clinical skills, knowledge, expertise, experiences, competencies, doctor-patient relation, doctors' and hospital's reputation rather than physical resources like physical assets. For this study, Malaysian private hospitals were selected as sample to investigate how hospitals extract the value of their intangible capital. This study aims at providing empirical evidence on the intellectual capital management practices in Malaysian private hospitals. Data was collected from a series of interviews with representatives from five private hospitals in Malaysia. Cross-case study analysis was carried out in analysing the data collected to develop patterns found in the evidence. The study reveals that the intellectual capital management in hospital industry is quite unique especially in the human capital management and the relational capital management. For human capital management, clinical staffs' competencies are crucial. Interestingly, the study found that physicians are often not the direct employees of the hospitals. This leads to a unique relationship between the hospital and the physicians. Meanwhile for the relational capital management, this study also reveals that the unique relationship that exists between the physicians and patients leads to the structural capital of the hospitals which may influence the hospitals' reputations and good names.

The present and future of intellectual capital in the healthcare sector

“…Others assigned the same role to IC in explaining the effects of HRM practice on organizational performance (Yang and Lin, 2009). The importance of IC to performance (Peng et al , 2007) and to sustainability of hospitals (Hamzah et al , 2018) cannot be understated, whether the organizations concerned were financial or nonfinancial (Pirozzi and Ferulano, 2016).…”

“…Nevertheless, academics have only in recent years started to analyze IC in the healthcare sector, where human knowledge, skills and experiences are fundamental (Hamzah et al , 2018; Peng et al , 2007). The papers already published on this have focused on IC's interrelated components [relational capital (RC), organizational capital (OC), and human capital (UC)] (Kamaluddin and Rahman, 2009; European Commission Brussels, 2002) because these three classes of IC are considered “value creators” (Cavicchi, 2017).…”

The Effect of Transformational Leadership Styles towards Managing Knowledge Assets

“…This is also one of the intellectual capital component -relational capital. For hospitals, relational capital contains the doctors and patients relationship, doctors and nurses relationship and doctors and management relationship (Hamzah et al 2017). As coined by Bontis (2002), this knowledge is influenced by the knowledge in the employee and the knowledge embedded in organization (Bontis 2002).…”

Aspects of Human Capital Management of Healthcare Workforce in the Context of Lifelong Learning: A Rapid Review

“…Inputs identified by the study are related to the role of the management of the healthcare organisations and the impact of decisions on the development of human capital. First, management of healthcare organisations has to assess whether necessary human resources, capabilities, and processes are in place for the successful development and implementation of strategy and should invest more in the knowledge and skill development of the employees (Hamzah, Hassan, Saleh, & Kamaluddin, 2017). Authors emphasize that it is important for the health care workforce not only to develop individual knowledge, but also the internalization of tacit knowledge should be practiced.…”