Expanding the Contextual Axes of Sustainable Intellectual Capital Reporting: Fuzzy Inference Evaluation of Multi-Sector Subsets

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Accounting, Bandarabaas Branch, Islamic Azad University, Bandarabaas, Iran.

2 Department of Accounting, Faculty of Management and Finance, Khatam University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Objective: The changes caused by the intellectual paradigms in the financial fields from the 80s caused the reliance on quantities in the field of reporting and the focus on objectivity in information disclosure to change, and the movement towards intangible capital began, and the method of reporting from purely quantitative fields to to develop qualitative and valuable domains. The development of this competitive strategy caused industries and companies to pay special attention to the effective way of managing intellectual capital (IC) as an urgent need for commercial success and consider it as a requirement for success in organizational functions so that based on those processes; Products and services become part of the innovative ecosystem. With the emergence of the basis of intellectual capital, competitive advantage was considered the focus of competitive strategies, and the knowledge resulting from this approach became the basis for the development and strategic directions of companies in various fields of the company such as finance and accounting. This research aims to create a Sustainable intellectual capital reporting framework and evaluate key examples in the context of capital market companies.
Method: The methodology of this study was exploratory from the point of view of the developmental result and based on the type of objective and qualitative and quantitative basis used to collect the data. The statistical population in the qualitative part was university experts and financial managers of capital market companies in the quantitative part. Data collection tools were interviews in the qualitative part and fuzzy scales and language comparison checklists in the quantitative part. Therefore, first, through three stages of coding, the model's dimensions were identified, and based on the fuzzy Delphi analysis, the reliability level was determined by calculating the average between the first and second rounds of Delphi. Finally, the appropriate fuzzy model was first defined through the default tests. Then, a hierarchical fuzzy analysis based on TODIM's approach was used to determine the most favorable axis of sustainable intellectual capital reporting.
Results: In this research, due to the lack of a coherent framework to evaluate the dimensions of sustainable intellectual capital reporting, an effort was made to identify the dimensions of the phenomenon under investigation by relying on the foundation's data analysis through Glazer's emerging approach based on interviews with experts. Therefore, during the three stages of coding, the six-dimensional theoretical framework of sustainable intellectual capital reporting was presented. Then, based on the fuzzy Delphi analysis process, an attempt was made to explore the reliability level of the identified dimensions. During two stages of fuzzy Delphi analysis and according to the difference between the average of the first and second rounds, it was determined that all the pillars of sustainable intellectual capital reporting could be generalized to capital market companies. In the second part of the analysis, through the hierarchical process and comparing the fuzzy and real values and during cross-validation (CV), an attempt was made to determine which fuzzy analysis process is appropriate to the research data through fuzzy default tests. The result in this part indicated the confirmation of the hierarchical fuzzy analysis that to innovate the analysis, the Todim type was used in this field to answer the fourth question of the research regarding the selection of the most favorable axis of sustainable intellectual capital reporting. The results in the qualitative part indicate the existence of 3 categories 6 components and 39 conceptual themes in the form of a six-dimensional model. In the quantitative part, the results showed that by confirming the dimensions identified through fuzzy Delphi analysis, the most desirable axis of intellectual capital reporting is the component of technological capital reporting, which can play a more effective role in sustainable reporting.
Conclusion: Technological capital is a technological capability in the systemic structure of companies that has the values of knowledge creation and information flow feedback from inside to outside the company, and vice versa. It can help the company's sustainability by developing technological dimensions in intellectual capital. Always the past models in intellectual capital relying on the three dimensions of human capital, structural and communication, the effectiveness of this competitive strategy in companies is limited to the disclosure of innovation, disclosure of educational and communication initiatives and policies with stakeholders while focusing on expanding the disclosure of the comprehensive dimensions of intellectual capital can play an effective role in improving the level of information transparency of companies and at the same time can help the sustainable development of companies in the economic system.

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References

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History

  • Receive Date: 30 October 2022
  • Revise Date: 18 February 2023
  • Accept Date: 27 February 2023

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