A bank’s intellectual capital and its importance in building competitiveness on the example of Polish listed banks

Abstract

Motivation: Contemporary banks operating in the knowledge-based economy are constantly looking for sources of improving their competitiveness and attractiveness compared to the banking sector. Therefore, the ability to flexibly respond to changes taking place in the market environment and use the resources and experience in a creative way becomes essential. Intellectual capital is a source of the bank’s intangible resources, such as knowledge, employee skills, service quality, social relations and image, and innovations. The present study focuses on the structure of intellectual capital, which has been long discussed for a long time and became a subject of numerous studies. The concept of division of the bank’s intellectual capital into three subsystems was herein presented: organizational capital (KORG), innovative capital (KINN) and institutional capital (KINS). These subsystems will be included in the creation of a synthetic measure defining the bank’s competitiveness. Aim: The objective of this study is to present a method enabling the assessment of the competitiveness of listed banks in Poland with the use of multidimensional statistical methods, taking into account diagnostic variables that determine the economic and intellectual capital of banks, including its subsystems. Results: The article systematizes the concept of the division of intellectual capital. Thanks to the aggregate measure of the bank’s competitiveness, the author presented a ranking of banks, indicating the leader among the 11 banks listed on the stock exchange in Poland in 2009–2019. The proposed multidimensional analysis of the bank considers its financial and intellectual resources, which means that stakeholders can evaluate the bank’s data and its long-term development strategies. The long-term leadership position may indicate the bank’s condition and its intensified activities in intellectual capital development, which may be important information for stakeholders.