The Relationship Between Knowledge Management and Intellectual Capital in Listed Companies of Mainland China.

As the global economic power reshuffles, mainland China stood as the world's biggest exporter in 2010, and has emerged as the second-largest economy in the world (CIA, 2010). In its transformation from a manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, how well a business manages its knowledge or utilizes its intellectual capital may be an important factor in determining a business' comparative advantage. Hence, the evaluation of the level of knowledge management ("KM") of a business may be helpful for business managers to improve business competitiveness. Rastogi (2000) considers KM as the foundation toward successful leveraging of intellectual capital ("IC"). If we take the view that knowledge forms the basis of IC, as in Ramezan (2011), then the level of knowledge utilization of an organization should be correlated with its level of intellectual capital. To test this empirically, a self-assessment on KM maturity level was used to gauge knowledge utilization of an organization, while Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC™) was used to assess the level of IC. The purpose of this research is to explore the presence of a relationship between KM maturity level and IC performance in listed companies in mainland China. In selecting companies representative of the economy in mainland China, the constituent companies of the CSI 100 (China Securities Index Co., Ltd.) were chosen. The Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC™) methodology was used to measure IC performance for its suitability in statistical analysis (Andriessen, 2004). VAIC™ of constituent companies of the CSI 100 was calculated by summing the totals of human capital efficiency, structural capital efficiency and capital employed efficiency. Questionnaires were collected to evaluate the level of KM in the surveyed organizations. The questionnaire was developed from the KM self-assessment framework proposed by Collison and Parcell (2004), and was used to measure the maturity level of KM. Overall, there were 26 questionnaires completed, which accounts for 25% of the sample. Finally, correlation analysis with SPSS was performed to examine if there is a correlation between IC and the maturity level of KM in the sampled companies in mainland China. The results showed that correlation between the two variables was not statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]