Measuring intellectual capital in a firm belonging to a strategic alliance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to measure intellectual capital (IC) infirms involved in strategic alliances, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, asexisting research is focused mainly on organizational level mainly and increasingly on macro-level unitsuch as regions or nations. There are very few works at the meso-level (i.e. alliances, clusters), and thepaper aims to fill this void, by providing researchers and practitioners with a tool capable of combiningmeasurement and management aims, developed at organizational level with the active participationof the researchers.Design/methodology/approach – The method of analysis is based on a model formalized through afuzzy expert system (FES). The FES are able to merge the capabilities of an expert system to simulatethe decision-making process with the vagueness typical of human reasoning, maintaining the abilityto still have a numeric value as a response. Its construction requires the participation of experts, whoseknowledge of the problem is accumulated in the form of blocks of rules. These features make it possibleto formalize the decision-making process related to the IC valuation, handling qualitative andquantitative variables, and exploring the cognitive mechanisms underlying this process.Findings – The outcome of the application is a system designed to measure the intangibleperformance deriving from participation in a strategic alliance using FES. This study contributes tothe broadening of the research community’s understanding regarding the alternative measurement ofIC created within strategic alliances.Research limitations/implications – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, IC literature lacksmethods expressly designed to measure the incremental value of IC originating from collaborationamong firms. From a measurement perspective, the results may be regarded as valuable proof that ICperformance within strategic alliances can be measured quantitatively.Practical implications – On the management side, the possibility of retracing the determinants ofdifferent IC intermediate indicators composing the final IC index allows strategic alliances managersto use this information for decision-making purposes.Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first study applying FES tomeasure IC in a firm belonging to a strategic alliance. In the authors’ opinion, fuzzy logic methodology,recently applied in empirical work designed to evaluate IC, represents a reliable methodology becauseof the “fuzzy” nature of IC.