Exploring the mediating role of dynamic capabilities in the relationship between intellectual capital and performance of information and communications technology firms

Abstract

With the rise of innovation-driven and Industry 4.0 era, knowledge has become the most important feature in the firm’s value creating process. Academics and practitioners have been devoting their attention to the study of intellectual capitals for the last two decades. Intellectual capital is an emerging and fast-evolving concept. Several reports have supposed that most of the corporate value and the global wealth are now based on intellectual capital. Scholars have widely recognized that intellectual capital dimensions including human capital, organizational capital and social capital, drive innovation, corporate change and social change locally, nationally and worldwide. Three separately literature streams developed in this study are intellectual capitals (ICs), dynamic capabilities and firm performance. There are arguments about the mediating role of the dynamic capabilities on the impacts of ICs on firm performance in an emerging market like Vietnam, especially in Information Technology Communication (ICT) sector. Therefore, one of the purposes of the study is to examine the mediating role of dynamic capabilities. To examine this potential, this dissertation tests a conceptual model to explain how three types of dynamic capabilities -learning, integration, and reconfiguration capability- mediate the impact of intellectual capital dimensions, including human, social, and organizational capital, on firm performance. This study, using a sample of 370 Vietnamese firms in the information and communications technology sector, found that dynamic capabilities play a mediating role in the relationship between intellectual capital dimensions and iii firm performance. Among dynamic capabilities, learning capability has the most significant mediating effect. Furthermore, the important roles of human, social, and organizational capital are addressed due to their direct effects on performance based on resource-based view theory, as well as their indirect effect via the mediation of dynamic capabilities.