Is the literature on content analysis of intellectual capital reporting heading towards a dead end?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to respond to the call by Dumay and Cai (2014) for new ideas to enhance intellectual capital (IC) research. One possibility is to draw conclusions on comparability across the results of prior studies. This study investigates whether the results of prior IC content analyses are comparable despite differences in their IC research frameworks. Design/methodology/approach – A content analysis of 428 German management reports is conducted, capturing the IC reporting scores for individual IC items to investigate the role of certain widely used IC items. The relationships of IC scores for different combinations of widely used IC items are further examined in a correlation analysis to indicate comparability of prior results. Findings – The findings show that widely used IC items capture the majority of IC reporting and that the IC scores for different combinations of these IC items are highly correlated. These findings indicate that the results of prior IC content analyses are comparable as long as most of the widely used IC items are included in prior IC research frameworks. Research limitations/implications – The study contributes to IC reporting research as it shows that conclusions can be drawn across prior studies in meta-analyses because the results of prior studies are comparable in rankings and key findings. Originality/value – Although content analyses of IC reporting have been previously criticised, this study seminally questions the comparability of the results of prior studies due to differences in the IC research frameworks.