Measuring intellectual capital: Learning from financial history

Emerging evidence from scientific studies and specific organizations suggests that how people are managed significantly affects organizational success, and that certain patterns of human resource activities are associated with financial performance. Most human resource (HR) and line managers, however, find existing measures of human and intellectual capital woefully inadequate. In this article, we suggest that designers of HR measurement systems can learn from the success of well-accepted measurement models in the financial and marketing arenas. We show that the historical development of these measurement systems suggests several lessons for the HR measures of the future. These lessons include articulating the links in the value chain, focusing on key organizational constraints, and using data to make “soft” intangible factors more tangible. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.