Intangible Assets – Insights from A Literature Review

Research Question: How do researchers address the definition, measurement, recognition and potential of intangible assets to generate future economic benefits when a formal structure for reporting them is highly controversial? Motivation: The inexistence of inclusive reporting mechanism to capture the value of intangible assets rise many debates for both researchers and users of accounting financial reports (Jeny and Moldovan, 2016). Although the role of intangible resources is increasing in the modern economy (OECD, 2011), traditional reporting is unable to provide a comprehensive representation of this class of assets (Lev, 2000; Stolowy and Jeny-Cazavan, 2001) and many intangible assets are still not recognised or may even not referred at all in the financial statements (Barth et. al., 2000). Idea: The paper investigates the status-quo of intangibles in research papers and identifies blank spots and ways to improve the information on intangible assets and how IASB revised IAS 38 Intangibles to catch-up the business’ challenges in regard with them. Data: The sample of current work comprises research papers about intangibles published during 2000-2019 in cutting-edge accounting and business journals. Tools: The content analysis of published papers was applied to discover categories of intangibles analysed, applied polices for measurement, debates on recognition and disclosure and potential of new intangibles to be reported. Findings: Conclusion of paper confirms that researches on intangibles have not arrived at a universally accepted framework for definition, measurement, recognition criteria, disclosure, but, in the same time, they emphasis the contribution of these resources to broaden competitiveness, performance, earnings. Contribution: This literature review covers all categories of intangibles – recognized and not-recognized from accounting perspective – explored in research papers from the latest 19 years and provide an interpretative approach for further investigation.