Critical Analysis of Burr and Girardi's Intellectual Capital Model

Introduction

There are many valuable assets for any organisation including visible and invisible. The focus of contemporary organisations are on knowledge creation capacity that that strengthens the ability of such organisations to realise opportunities in every point of leveraging. Realistically, organisations draw insights from theories to analyse and evaluate the performance from both individual and organisational frameworks. Internal assets including intellectual capacity is deemed to be the most important. The paper focuses on the critical analysis of the intellectual capital model expounded by Burr and Girardi. Comparison with Williams’ theory of behavior as determinant of performance is addressed.

Burr and Girardi further developed Ulrich’s conception of intellectual capital demonstrated by the formula: intellectual capital = competence x commitment which takes into considerations a third integral element that is control, and provide an empirical causality between the variables which Ulrich fell short of doing. The authors contend that the settlement of the link between HR practices entrenched in organisational behaviours and the value of organisational intellectual capital must be a necessity. Intellectual capital is evident within two broad levels: individual and organisational. The interplay between ability, behaviour, effort and time to which the employees have the sole autonomy is said to be an important contributing factor for organisations. Deemed as �the backbone of the organisations’, structural capital, which is founded on intellectual capital, takes into account organisational ethos explicitly outlined in strategies, processes and policies.

Burr and Girardi concluded that intellectual capital has three core ideas integrated into it: capacity, willingness and opportunity. In lieu with Ulrich’s theory, the first and second ideas are clear manifestations of competence and commitment elements and that opportunity is the loophole of such model. There are four basic propositions that the authors presented. According to them, the measure of intellectual capital is regarded as the measure of capacity, skills utlisation and efficacy when it comes to competence requirements as well as commitment, either affective, continuance or normative. Combined, the impact of this will be moderated by the third element that is job control or work autonomy. Within the frameworks of job designs, theorists suggest that the power over respective jobs and hence performance encompasses influences on the ability to utilise skills, to conform to efficacy beliefs and job crafting with the ideology of worker empowerment at the center.

As such, what the authors is trying to prove is that aside from individual competence and commitment there is a pluralistic yet highly-individualistic factor whereby it will determine the extent by which individual organisational members will contribute to the organisation’s being and future. Unreservedly, the dynamics of job control is central on the motivation of the people that allows them to act on their own prerogative. Burr and Girardi divide job control into behavioural and cognitive whereby the former is identified to be the �acceptable’ actions and the latter as the informed choice. Nonetheless, both distinguished how individuals perform within an organisation that requires competence, expertise and skills; embeds on various intrinsic and extrinsic factors and delivers individual decision-making regarding performing tasks and duties.

Knowledge and information are increasingly becoming the �life’ of every organisation and as unique source of competitive advantage. Likewise, Burr and Girardi failed to clearly connect commitment, competence and control perhaps because of the inherent parasitical element of the model. Intellectual capital cannot be unilaterally applied in efforts to explain performance and performance management. For once, human capital and structural capital are central on culture and customer knowledge so there must be the holistic movement of intellectual capital if it is to affect the organisational productivity and performance in the long run. Second is the motivation of the people and how it relates with ability. Burr and Girardi could have integrated the receptiveness to learning or the degree of how quickly a person acquires new knowledge significantly that people have differing levels of knowledge and capacity. Third is focused on accurate role perceptions or how well individuals understand the behaviours they are expected to perform as well as their desire to fulfill unmet needs and to resolve cognitive dissonance. Fourth is realized on the fact that there are factors that impact employees’ performance but are beyond their control. The authors could also relate the performance delivered