Employees’ Perceptions on the Relationship of Intellectual Capital and Business Performance of ICT Companies

Abstract

The ICT sector has been recognized as a sector with great potential for the growth and development of the economy of the Republic of Serbia. This initiated the need to analyze the strategic aspect of the ICT sector intellectual capital concept. The purpose of the paper is to empirically test the impact of intellectual capital on business performance within the ICT sector. The research was conducted on a sample of 611 employees in ICT sector companies in the Republic of Serbia. The partial least squares method was used to model the structural equations for analysis of the primary data and testing of the hypotheses. The findings show a positive and statistically significant relationship between individual components of intellectual capital and the business performance of ICT companies, which confirms the hypotheses. Human capital proved to have the strongest influence on the business performance of ICT companies. This paper provides new scientific knowledge which can contribute to creating long-term strategies that shall focus on more sophisticated management of intellectual capital, compared to the traditional tasks of allocating resources of the organization. The findings may be of interest to other sectors stakeholders to provide deeper understanding on intellectual capital as an essential source of companies’ competitive advantage that can positively impact business performance.