Integrating ESG and Transactional Analysis in Modelling Intellectual Capital: The CI-PEI Conceptual Framework

The growing dominance of intangible assets in firm valuation has exposed a critical gap between what organizations report and what effectively drives market value. While traditional accounting frameworks fail to capture human capital, organizational know-how, and the psychological dynamics of managerial decision-making, recent advances in ESG measurement and organizational psychology offer new opportunities for integrating these dimensions into a unified conceptual model. Building on secondary analysis of a panel regression conducted on 32 firms during 2006–2013, where unrecognized intangible value (IDE) and operational human capital emerged as the strongest predictors of market value added, this paper develops the CI–PEI (Capital Intellectual – Psychological and ESG Institutional) model. The model reinterprets historical determinants of value using contemporary constructs: Human Capital Index (HCI), Corporate Governance Index (CGI), and Transactional Analysis (AT). CI–PEI consolidates institutional maturity (ESG-S and ESG-G) with managerial psychological maturity, offering a coherent framework for understanding how organizations transform people, processes and decision architectures into intangible value. This integrated perspective demonstrates a structural continuity between pre-ESG value drivers and today’s theoretical paradigms, providing scholars and practitioners with a robust lens for capturing the mechanisms through which firms create, accumulate and activate intellectual capital. The model opens new avenues for empirical validation and for advancing the strategic management of intangible resources in modern organizations.