Evaluation of intellectual capital and its components in Iranian universities

Nowadays one of the most important responsibilities of higher education is ‘production and diffusion of knowledge‘, this responsibility is related to recruitment and retention of human resources. In spite of the fact that human resource management is amain subsystem of universities, there has been neglecting to analyzehuman resources as an intellectual capital in universities. The aim of this study is to evaluate intellectual capital and its components (human capital, structural capital and relational capital) in higher education institutions across Isfahan, Iran. A descriptive and analytical research method was utilized. The Statistical population included all faculty members of thestate universities which a sample of 492 was selectedfrom 1830 faculty members of 5 universitiesthrough stratified random sampling. The data collection instrument was intellectual capital questionnaireadopted from Torres (2006). Face and content validity of the questionnaire confirmed by experts and its reliability was estimated 0.95 through Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The gathered data was analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings showed that intellectual capital and its components (human capital, structural capital and relational capital) mean scores were lower than mean criteria. Significant relationships were observed among human capital, structural capital and relational capital at the Universities. Significant differences were also observed regarding demographic variables. This paper shows to the importance of analyzing intellectual capital components in Iranian universities. It offers practical help to universities to develop means to identify, measure, manage and value their intangible assets.