Using best-worst method to improve intellectual capital management model: a case study of the financial service company

Abstract

Presently, most managers still use financial indicators as the only indicators for performance evaluation, ignoring the intellectual capital (IC) indicators that can effectively support the strategy, and lacking specific measures to manage IC. Nevertheless, the details of the approaches currently used to set IC indicators are sketchy or unclear. The traditional IC management model lacks the ability to check the importance or priority of candidate indicators. The root cause of this situation is that in the original process model of IC, there was no appropriate method to determine the importance weights of Key Success Factors (KSF) and Key Performance Indicator (KPI). From the literature review, there are very limited studies on IC management in the financial shared services industry, especially there are very few studies related to IC elements. In addition, there are no relevant studies applying the Best-Worst Method (BWM) in the field of IC management and measurement To improve the capability and efficiency of IC management in financial shared services companies, the purpose of this research is to propose a new integrated model for developing IC performance indicators to improve the traditional IC process model, and the proposed model will be applied to a financial shared services company. This research aims to 1) To identify the critical problem in terms of intellectual capital management in the financial shared services industry. 2) To develop an integrated model for identifying and selecting intellectual capital performance indicators. 3) To evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed model. First, a participatory survey is conducted by several experts and the results of the questionnaire are used to identify multiple KSFs and KPIs related to the IC strategy of the target company. Second, the research focuses on the construction of an IC measurement system and the methodology of this research combines the IC Process Model, Skandia Navigator, and Best-Worst Method to calculate the weights of IC indicators. Finally, the proposed model is evaluated using the After-Action Review method. The results of the research indicate that IC is a key driver for the development of competitive advantage in financial shared services companies, and that establishing an accurate and effective IC measurement indicator system is a prerequisite and foundation for IC management. The proposed model contributes to the identification of important IC indicators in IC management for organizations, and these prioritized IC indicators facilitate managers to focus on the key components of IC management and better allocate the limited resources within the organization to enhance organizational performance.