Nowadays, intellectual capital is becoming the pre-eminent resource for creating economic wealth. Tangible assets such as property, plant, and equipment continue to be important factors in the productions of both goods and services. However, their relative importance has decreased through time as the importance of intangible, knowledge-based assets has increased. This shift in importance has raised a number of accounting questions critical for managing intangible assets. This paper develops a framework for identifying and classifying the main components of intellectual capital (i.e. human capital, structural capital, and relation capital) at the level of universities. In addition, methods of measuring and reporting intellectual capital at both the individual component and organization levels are presented. This provides an exploratory foundation for accounting systems and processes useful for efficient management of intellectual assets.
