Theoretical perspectives on intellectual capital: a backward look and a proposal for going forward

In recent years the intellectual capital literature has exhibited relatively few new theoretical contributions, in contrast to the flurry of such work in the period 1996–2003. The purpose of the present paper is to revisit a number of the major theoretical contributions to the intellectual capital field in order to identify where any renewal of theoretical endeavour might be targeted. The greater part of the existing theoretical corpus is found to have a normative quality, something particularly evident in policy-oriented contributions on accounting for intellectual capital. The continued absence of a critical perspective on intellectual capital is identified to be a worrying lacuna, and thereby a potentially valuable space for a further round of theoretical activity.