9/28/2018 Strategic management

1st Assignment
Intellectual capital & knowledge
Workers

BY

Mohamed Ibrahim Elsayed

ESLSCA Business School E55B

INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL

It is the total of a company’s knowledge. If you were to take a big syringe and
extract all the knowledge from every employee (and every relationship), you
would end up with a huge vat of intellectual capital (not to mention a few
traumatized employees).

However, what good does this intellect do? Well – there is not a single business in
the world, which could function without the knowledge locked inside every
employee. In addition, there is a direct relationship between intellectual capital
and business success. Just think about how many of the most talented people
work for the most important businesses.

The following are the primary types of intellectual capital:

Human Capital: The knowledge, know-how, abilities and creativity of employees.

In many cases, people do not like to be referred to as "capital." Terms such as
talent or human resources are common alternatives.

Structural Capital: Intangible elements of a firm's organizational culture, business

processes and ability to innovate. This includes documents, media, processes,
systems, applications, data, intellectual property and trade secrets.

Relational Capital: A firm's relationship with the outside world including investors,
customers, employees, partners, regulators, communities and other stakeholders.
This can include both informal relationships such as business contacts and formal
contracts.

Knowledge worker

A knowledge worker is anyone who works for a living at the tasks of developing or
using knowledge. For example, a knowledge worker might be someone who
works at any of the tasks of planning, acquiring, searching, analyzing, organizing,
storing, programming, distributing, marketing, or otherwise contributing to the
transformation and commerce of information and those (often the same people)
who work at using the knowledge so produced. A term first used by Peter Drucker
in his 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow, the knowledge worker includes those in
the information technology fields, such as programmers, systems analysts,
technical writers, academic professionals, researchers, and so forth. The term is
also frequently used to include people outside of information technology, such as
lawyers, teachers, scientists of all kinds, and students of all kinds.

Course Assignment Page 1