Intellectual capital and the ‘capable firm’: narrating, visualising and numbering for managing knowledge

• Published in: Accounting, organizations and society Vol. 26; no. 7-8; pp. 735 - 762
• Main Authors: Mouritsen, J, Larsen, H T, Bukh, P N D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Pergamon Press Inc 01.10.2001
• Subjects: Accounting; Denmark; Financial reporting; Human capital; Information technology; Intellectual capital; Knowledge; Knowledge management; Narratives; Portfolio management; Stock exchange; Studies; Europe
• ISSN: 0361-3682; 1873-6289
• DOI: 10.1016/S0361-3682(01)00022-8

Intellectual capital statements are "new" forms of reporting whose object is knowledge management activities. Based on 17 firms' work to develop intellectual capital statements, this paper analyzes them as managerial techniques making knowledge amenable to intervention. Aspects of actor-network-theory are mobilized to suggest that the intellectual capital statement is a center of translation, which mobilizes knowledge management via three interrelated elements: 1. knowledge narratives, 2. visualizations, and 3. numbers. Such forms of intervention circumscribe the aspiration to transform knowledge from something internal to the person into something that is the effect of a collective arrangement. They allow - through capital statements - the dark, tacit knowing of individuals to come into the open space of calculation and action at a distance.