The role of intellectual capital reporting (ICR) in organisational transformation: a discursive practice perspective

Ai Yu, Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo and Isidora Kourti

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Intellectual Capital Reporting (ICR) has garnered increasing attention as a new accounting technology that can engender significant organisational changes. However, when ICR was first recognised as a management fashion, the intended change it heralded in stable environments was criticised for having limited impact on the state of practice. Conceiving ICR through a lens predicated on the notion of discursive practice, we argue that ICR can enable substantive change in emergent conditions. We empirically demonstrate this process by following the implementation of ICR in one organisation through interviews, documents and observations over 30 months. The qualitative analysis of the data corpus shows how situated change, subtle but no less significant, can take place in the name of intellectual capital as actors appropriate ICR into their everyday work practices while improvising variations to accommodate different logics of action. The paper opens up a new avenue to examine the specific roles of ICR in relation to the types of change enacted. It thus demonstrates when and how ICR may transcend a mere management fashion and the intended change it sets in motion through altering organisational actors’ ways of thinking and doing within the confines of their organisation.

Keywords: Intellectual Capital Reporting (ICR); Management fashion; Discursive practice; Substantive change; Emergent/situated change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 1, June, 2017, 45, pp. 48-62. ISSN: 1045-2354

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