Impact of Intellectual Capital Disclosure on the Company\'s Performance in Different Industries

This research paper is devoted to the study of the impact of intellectual capital (IC) and its individual elements on the performance of the companies, that is characterised by such financial ratios as return on assets, return on equity, return on invested capital and enterprise multiplier, that previously are not used by the authors. The methodological basis for the study is the analysis of panel data, taking into account the time effects and endogeneity of external shocks. The models that have been developed in the presented paper for assessing the impact of IC components on the company's performance include two main methods of measuring IC at once: the using individual elements that make up the modified value added taking into account intellectual capital (MVAIC) and direct IC identification methods (DIC), - as well as the industry effect on the using of intellectual capital by companies as a competitive advantage in the industry. The scientific novelty of this study is explained not only by considering the return on invested capital and the enterprise multiplier as dependent variables, which was not encountered by the authors of previous researches, according to the analysis of empirical approaches to the study of IC, however also by the inclusion of the disclosed data in the relational capital efficiency indicator (RCE) on the value of such a specific resource of the company as goodwill, which characterises the business reputation of the company, which is consistent with the definition of relational capital as an element of IC, which is responsible for relations with the external environment. The hypotheses, that have been formulated in the study about the presence of an industry effect on the effectiveness of the using of elements of intellectual capital, are tested on a database consisting of Russian companies and foreign companies belonging to countries that are occupying the first 15 places in terms of the development of the knowledge economy. This allows us to study the relationship between the knowledge economy, the development of which is associated at the macro level with government policy, and the increase in “reserves” and the frequency of disclosure of IC, whose positive impact on the performance of companies is confirmed in the framework of the study and in previous papers. Identifying the problem of endogeneity and combating it in the case of structural capital indicates the need to take into account its complex structure for further researches and the search for new instrumental variables for its characteristics, as in the case of innovation capital in the models. This research will be of practical importance not only for companies and its management, in whose interests to acquire new competitive advantages in the growing knowledge economy by investing in those elements of IC that are characterised by positive returns, however also for investors whose attention is directed towards disclosing information about IC used by the company in financial and non-financial statements.