Measurement and Disclosure of Intellectual Capital: Evidence from a Developing Country

In today’s knowledge-based economy, measurement and disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) are very crucial for enhancing business performance and economic growth, both in manufacturing as well as in service organizations. This study attempts to provide an insight into the style of IC disclosures and measurements done by the Indian companies. First, a longitudinal study was carried out to analyse how three Indian firms--Reliance Industries Limited, Balrampur Chini Mills and Shree Cement Limited--disclosed their IC reports. Second, in order to survey the recent IC measurement scenario, we conducted another study of 8 Indian pharmaceutical companies in which the market value added (MVA) approach is applied for measuring IC on their 2004-05 to 2008-09 annual reports. Also, it seeks to measure the effectiveness of IC as compared to tangible assets (TA) for the selected companies. On an average, the selected pharmaceutical companies reported a positive value of IC; significant correlation has been noticed between TA and net operating profits. However, no significant difference was found between percentage of IC to MV and percentage of TA to MV. At present, disclosure of intellectual capital information by the companies is done by very few leading companies, purely on a “voluntary” basis. Unfortunately, the omission of IC information may adversely influence the quality of decisions made by shareholders, or lead to material misstatements. The results of longitudinal study confirmed that IC disclosure in these companies is almost negligible and its disclosure had not received any preference from the mentors of these corporations. IC reports may initially be used for ‘internal’ management purposes; but an ‘external’ stakeholder-focus of IC report should be the ultimate goal.