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Chapter Two: Literature review.
2. Introduction
This chapter aims to review various studies done which are relevant to this study. It will start
with general discussion about intellectual capital then later will review matters pertaining to
knowledge sharing. Customer capital and renewal capital are included in the review so as to
provide general understanding of intellectual capital as a whole; however they are beyond the
scope of the main discussion presented in chapter four. Such terms as intellectual capital,
knowledge sharing, structural capital and human capital were used as key search terms.
Knowledge transfer, human resources and intangible assets were also used as related terms.
2.1. Intellectual capital general overview.
“With the corporate intranet as a catalyst, intellectual capital has grown into knowledge
management, the hottest new topic in the business community – up there on a par with
Information technology (IT), as competitive advantage, Total Quality Management
(TQM); and Business Process Reengineering, and it may well surpass them all” (Koenig,
1998, p.222).
Intellectual capital has been a subject of interest especially in the business world recently.
The changing environment has stimulated stiff competition in almost every sector
surrounding human activities. Developing intellectual capital management as the
organizational modus operandi is the recipe for success. According to Nermien Al-Ali
business resources were formerly comprised of 80 percent of tangible and capital resources,
with intangible assets making up around 20 percent. He went on further to explain that,
steadily this changed with intangible assets reaching 80 percent of the assets of the majority
of organisations by 1999 (Al-Ali, 2003).
The topic gathered increased interest more recently in the 1990s, with the rapid development
of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). As business processes became
increasingly „enabled‟ by large-scale information systems, information systems designers
attempted to capture employees‟ implicit and explicit knowledge in “corporate memory” by
means of intranets and other similar applications (Malhotra, 2000, p.1) for more discussion
about the origin of intellectual capital see also (Malhotra, 2000a, 2000b). Intellectual capital
was perhaps more prevalent in 1995-2000. Even more important was that the Internet‟s
explosion during the 1990s occurred concurrently with the intellectual capital movement. The
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