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Linking National Contexts with Intellectual Capital: A Comparison between Spain and Morocco

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Juan-Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro  and
Maria Teresa Sánchez-Polo
Juan-Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro
Affiliation:
Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (Spain)
Maria Teresa Sánchez-Polo*
Affiliation:
Hospital Universitario “Virgen de la Arrixaca” (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to María Teresa Sánchez Polo. Hospital Universitario “Virgen de la Arrixaca”. Carretera Madrid-Cartagena, s/n. El Palmar. Murcia. (Spain). Phone: +34-968369500. Fax: +34-968369776. E-mail: sanchez_polo@hotmail.com
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Abstract

The ‘national environment’, which includes belief and value systems, shapes the way individuals, groups and organisations perceive the world around them and determines how they react to ongoing changes. This paper analyses the role of different context's effects on intellectual capital by means of an empirical investigation of 112 Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the Spanish and Moroccan telecommunication industries. Within the investigation, repeated ANOVA were used, which were validated by factor analysis. Results support that Spanish SMEs are more positively associated with higher levels of human, structural and relational capital. The meaningful differences are clearly found in the ‘structural capital’. Our findings open avenues for further research to explore how governments can facilitate learning and unlearning environments in SME communities. These findings have important implications for general intellectual capital theories, as they suggest that there is no guarantee that intellectual capital theories developed within the cultural context of one particular country can be applied in another with good effect. National contexts provide the environment for learning, which in turn may have the effect of adequately improving intellectual capital.

El ambiente nacional, el cual incluye las creencias y los sistemas de valores compartidos, influye de una forma clara y directa cómo las personas, los grupos y las organizaciones perciben el mundo alrededor de ellos, y determina cómo afrontan a los cambios a los que tienen que hacer frente. Este trabajo analiza el papel que los diferentes contextos nacionales ejercen sobre la creación de capital intelectual, mediante un trabajo empírico de 112 pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMEs) del sector de las telecomunicaciones en España y Marruecos. Para ello, hemos utilizado la técnica estadística de medias repetidas apoyada con un análisis factorial confirmatorio. Los resultados sugieren que las empresas españolas se encuentran asociadas a niveles mayores de capital humano, estructural y relacional. Las mayores diferencias se encuentran en el capital estructural. Circunstancias estas que ponen en riesgo la validez de generalizar los resultados obtenidos por la nueva corriente desarrollada entorno al capital intelectual en diferentes contextos culturales. Además, dado que los resultados apoyan que el contexto nacional proporciona el ambiente necesario para aprender, y este a su vez se asocia a la creación de capital intelectual, el presenta trabajo plantea una futura línea de investigación que relaciona el contexto de aprendizaje y desaprendizaje impulsado desde los diferentes gobiernos y el capital intelectual de las PYMEs.

Keywords

national contextsintellectual capitalSpainMoroccoSMEscontextos nacionalescapital intelectualEspañaMarruecosPYMEs
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , May 2010 , pp. 329 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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