DOI: 10.17408/FC/591443

The present study explores whether a different degree of ownership concentration and diverse ownership types (i.e. block holdders, family, state, industrial companies and institutional shareholders) affect the intellectual capital performance measured using several proxies (e.g. Value Added Intellectual Coefficient, intangible assets, Research and Development expenses).
By opening the ownership structures black box, theoretically this study adds to both the corporate governance and intellectual capital literature, highlighting significant relations between the intellectual capital performance and ownership types. The findings on a balanced panel data set of European firms are consistent with predictions of agency theory and have policy implications. The study is relevant to corporations, providing arguments in support of using non-financial information (such as ownership structures) to predict the intellectual capital performance. Further, it demonstrates the existence of differences in ownership type preferences, guiding regulators in developing laws and diclosure requirements intended to minimize private benefit-seeking by the dominant owner.

Silvia Ferramosca, Ph.D., CPA, is a Post-Doc Research Fellow at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Pisa. Her research interests are focused on: corporate governance, financial accounting, intellectual capital, family business, international accounting standards IAS/IFRS, and auditing. She is the author of recent studies on these topics published in the Family Business Review, in the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, in the Journal of Management and Governance and in the Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital.