Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Intellectual Capital

John Dumay and Jim Rooney
organisation. As result, Lands’ managers need to focus on developing revenue streams from <strong>the</strong>ir
services and reporting <strong>the</strong> results to NSW Treasury and <strong>the</strong> wider community. The strategic
cornerstone <strong>of</strong> creating GBE structures was to “seek to identify, value and demonstrate <strong>the</strong>
Knowledge (Intellectual) Capital within <strong>the</strong> Department” (Lands 2004, 4). As a result a commitment
was made by <strong>the</strong> Director General to implement practices aimed at improving <strong>the</strong> IC and knowledge
stocks <strong>of</strong> Lands and to publish an IC statement in <strong>the</strong> 2004/2005 annual report. The statement, first
published in 2005, continues to be published (see Lands 2005a; 2006; 2007; 2008; 2009). Notably,
Lands was <strong>the</strong> first Australian Government entity to publish a specific IC statement and is seen as
leading exemplar <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> practice from both a public sector and Australian perspective. From 2008 to
2010 Lands won <strong>the</strong> “Knowledge Capital Reporting Award” at <strong>the</strong> Australasian Reporting Awards 1 .
Additionally, Lands won <strong>the</strong> 2009 Asian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) Award for <strong>the</strong>
public sector.
From <strong>the</strong> evidence above, we can conclude Lands is seen externally as successful in adopting IC
management and reporting practices. But <strong>the</strong> impetus <strong>of</strong> our paper is to examine <strong>the</strong> impacts from an
internal perspective, in particular <strong>the</strong> tension between measuring and managing IC we identified
earlier. Our data, based on <strong>the</strong> authors’ Lands research from 2005 to 2010, consists <strong>of</strong> field notes,
interview recordings and transcripts along with analysing documents such as meeting minutes,
business plans and annual reports. In our most recent research, conducted in 2010, we interviewed
senior management, most whom have participated since 2005, and new senior managers working
with <strong>the</strong> newly added bodies. We also continued to analyse annual reports and internal documents.
4. Measuring for managing?
Our motivation is to explore <strong>the</strong> emerging <strong>the</strong>me <strong>of</strong> measurement as a prerequisite for successfully
managing IC. We were motivated by Lands’ (2009, 14) admission that “we are challenged to find
improved metrics which reflect outcomes” so we decided to fur<strong>the</strong>r explore <strong>the</strong> <strong>the</strong>me. Initially Lands
advocated <strong>the</strong> Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as its main means <strong>of</strong> measuring IC (Lands 2004, 6). As a
result, <strong>the</strong> initial business plan for Lands (2005b) documented fifteen non-financial key performance
indicators (KPIs) within <strong>the</strong> BSC framework. For example, one strategic priority was to (Lands 2005b,
9) “Determine customer needs and service gaps by undertaking a market analysis and customer
survey” supported by <strong>the</strong> KPI <strong>of</strong> “% improvement in customer satisfaction”. However, within <strong>the</strong> plan
<strong>the</strong>re were no targets set for any <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> indicators. Not setting targets may seem like not knowing
where one is going but as <strong>the</strong> Director General (DG) outlined in a 2005 interview:
“… <strong>the</strong> best application <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Balanced Scorecard is not to implement it chapter and
verse, a la Kaplan and Norton, but to take <strong>the</strong> framework and apply it and modify it to
your own organisational needs”.
Consistent with <strong>the</strong> DG’s words, when Lands released its second IC Statement (Lands 2005a, 11-8),
a tailored BSC framework and a modified Danish IC Statement framework were combined (see
Mouritsen et al., 2003) as Figure 1 outlines.
Figure 1: Lands IC statement framework 2006-9
1 See http://dev.arawards.com.au/index.php/eng/Winners/2010-Award-Recipients/Special-Awards
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