Intellectual capital and value creation in Spanish firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and to explain the influence of representative variables of human capital and structural capital on the creation of business value.Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory analysis was initially performed on the degree to which firms actually used human and structural capital indicators, through a survey sent out to Spanish firms with a staff of 25 employees or more. Subsequently, by means of an explanatory analysis, the relationship was studied between the use made of the aforementioned indicators and a set of variables selected as representative of value creation. The information on value creation was taken from the Sistema de Analisis de Balances Ibericos (SABI‐AMADEUS) database. Moreover, in an attempt to corroborate the results of this explanatory analysis, a further independent variable was simultaneously introduced taken from the financial statements held on the same database and applied to the same sample of firms; known as the value added inte...