Intellectual capital and corporate performance: an empirical analysis from Chinese listed companies

As the main driver of company values in the era of knowledge economy, Intellectual Capital (IC) is becoming more and more important. In this paper, we have used all listed companies of Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges in 2005 as a collective sample, and have chosen 223 companies to prove how IC affects the corporate performance in Chinese listed companies. IC information on monetary measurement and non-monetary measurement from the annual reports of Chinese listed companies has been used in our empirical analysis. We found a positive relationship between intellectual capital and corporate performance. Moreover, the empirical result shows that IC has a more significant and sustaining impact on corporate performance than physical capital has. Besides, all IC subdomains have influence on corporate performance, and relationship capital, especially, has a more significant impact. As a result, our country should strengthen investment and management on IC, especially on human capital and organisational capital in order to enhance the core capabilities of enterprises, and improve corporate performance.