A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE IN THE ENGINEERING CONSULTING INDUSTRY: A PATH ANALYSIS

Abstract

Engineering consulting firms, like other knowledge‐based enterprises, take intellectual capital as their most important asset embedded in the organisation. This research aims to analyse the correlation between intellectual capital and business performance. The questionnaire was sent to all Taiwan's engineering consulting firms, and 101 copies were collected. It was found that, among these engineering consulting firms, the structural capital and relational capital show better performance, while human capital has poorer performance. This is especially true for staff education and training. This indicates that there is still room for improving human resource management by engineering consulting firms. It is observed by path analysis that, among the three dimensions of engineering consulting firms’ intellectual capital, the human capital has a great influence on structural capital and relational capital. However, only relational capital has a direct influence on business performance. Human capital has an influence upon the business performance via the relational capital.