Intellectual capital in higher education institutions: an exploratory literature review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26507/paper.4406Keywords:
Higer Education Institutes (HEIs), Intellectual Capital, Quality ManagementAbstract
This paper presents an exploratory literature review, taking documents from 2020 to 2024 and developed to understand the role of intellectual capital (IC) in higher education institutions (HEIs). IC has been identified as a crucial driver of innovation, particularly in higher education systems, and it also provides a framework for identifying and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of an HEI. In the university context, the role of the IC in the creation of research competencies, technological and knowledge management competencies and competencies for inter- and intradepartmental cooperation is highlighted.
Intellectual capital can be understood as the combination of activities and intangible resources of an institution that allows it to transform material, financial and human resources into a system capable of creating value. And this is generally made up of three dimensions: human capital (HC), structural capital (SC), and relational capital (RC).
The review revealed that, by measuring and managing their IC, HEIs can identify specific areas that require improvement and make informed strategic decisions to optimize their performance in each of their mission axes: teaching, research, and extension; which positions the IC as a means to manage the quality of the mission axes of HEIs. The relevance of human capital factors such as "Quality of teaching" and "Quality of faculty" to measure and manage the first mission axis of HEIs, teaching, is especially highlighted. In this way, the IC also serves as a guide for aligning an HEI's resources, capacities, and activities with its mission and objectives.
However, it is suggested that future studies address the impact that each dimension of IC has on the quality of the mission axes of HEIs, specifically; since the documents examined show an approach focused on the human dimension and to a lesser extent on the other dimensions, especially the relational dimension, despite agreeing on the integral importance of each of the dimensions for this context.
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