The Role of Stakeholder Engagement in the Measurement, Management, and Reporting of Intellectual Capital: A Qualitative Analysis on Integrated Reporting Practices

Intellectual capital (IC) is considered as a key driver in the value creation process. In spite of the expanding relevance of this important resource, practitioners and scholars have underlined the inadequacy of IC reporting practices due to the information asymmetry and the lack of an acknowledged standard. In this context, the International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRF) has rapidly gained considerable prominence, offering concise and clear guidelines for the reporting of IC information. Previous studies suggest that integrated reporting (IR) process is able to improve the measurement, management and reporting of IC because it helps to develop internal awareness within the organization on the value creation mechanisms. In the path of IR adoption, the stakeholder engagement process plays an important role, because it should help IR’s preparers in understanding the relevant themes for stakeholders, thus ensuring the convergence of information disclosed, included IC, with those requested or considered material by stakeholders. According to a performative approach, this process can contribute to clarify the priorities for the company in the relations system with the stakeholders and to implicate some change in action about this dimension. Moving from these considerations, the aim of this study is to understand how stakeholder engagement, which represents a crucial activity in the IR process, influences the measurement, management and reporting of IC. We analyse this issue from a critical and performative perspective by investigating how the stakeholder engagement process is realized in practice in different business contexts and how it affects the internal awareness about IC, especially about relational capital, which includes the dimension of relationship with the external stakeholder.