Using an Intellectual Capital Statement to Deploy Knowledge Management: The Example of an Austrian Chamber of Agriculture

• Published in: Electronic journal of knowledge management : EJKM 2016-03, Vol.14 (1), p.45
• Main Authors: Bardy, Roland, Rubens, Arthur, Pelzmann, Gerhard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Knowledge management
• ISSN: 1479-4411

The paper reports on the impact of building an intellectual capital statement for the Chamber of Agriculture in Styria, Austria (Landeskammer Steiermark, "LK Styria"), and with the subsequent issues of organizational development. LK Styria is a knowledge-based organization where intellectual capital accounts for a large share of the entity's value. Building on the activities of LK Styria and their outcomes, a knowledge-based intellectual capital inventory was set up for the human, structural and relationship resources based on the method "Wissensbilanz made in Germany". The strengths of the intellectual capital of Styria LK lie primarily in its core competencies of promotion, training and consulting. The contexts of LK Styria that produce value are its working conditions and the relationships with their members, customers, the public at large, and with public functionaries. It was found that the establishment of an of the Intellectual Capital (IC) Statement not only enhances the performance of LK Styria but also increases the resilience of the LK Styria when unexpected changes arise on the EU-level and on the national level, and thus expands the sustainability of the organization. Consequential to this IC Statement, measures were introduced to improve processes and outputs: a central lever was to be a new framework for process orientation; enhanced quality management was to be introduced as well as newly structured information handling inside and outside the organization.