Intellectual capital and business performance : an empirical study for the Greek listed companies

Abstract

The aim of this study is to empirically examine the four elements of intellectual capital (human capital, customer capital, structural capital and innovation capital) and their relationship with business performance in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). This study was conducted based on a psychometrically validated questionnaire developed and launched by Bontis (1997) and Bontis et al. (2000). Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Model have been used as statistical methods to analyse the five hypotheses developed. Our results are designed to extend it to degrees consistent with those revealed by Bontis et al. (2000) for a Malaysian set of industries. In particularly, we found that: (a) human capital is important and positively associated to customer capital in both service and non-service industries; (b) customer capital has an influence in structural capital rather than in non-service industries; (c) innovation capital seems to have an important and positive relationship to structural capital, regardless of the industry type; and (d) structural capital has a positive relationship to business performance in both industry types, and especially in non-service industries.