The impact of government-to-government endeavors on the intellectual capital of public organizations

Abstract

This paper draws on sources from two bodies of knowledge: eGovernment and the strategic role of intangible assets in public agencies. It was elaborated in order to measure the variation of the intellectual capital in public organizations involved in government-to-government (G2G) endeavors. In order to achieve this, a heuristic frame was developed to evaluate the impact of G2G endeavors on the components of the intellectual capital of a public agency, namely its human capital, organizational capital, external capital, and innovation capital. Applying this heuristic frame to a G2G endeavor in Brazil linking the Brazilian Central Bank and the Justice Department, a positive impact on the intellectual capital of the Courts of Justice associated with it was detected. Moreover, it was concluded that this G2G undertaking influenced all the components of the intellectual capital of the Courts of Justice alike. Thereafter, the model was validated through a positive and strong statistical correlation between the intellectual capital variation in the Courts of Justice and the value perception of the employees both accrued from the G2G undertaking. Finally, in addition to the research limitations, some concluding remarks are set forth for public managers, practitioners, and academics to help them grasp the potential of using the intellectual capital theory to assess eGovernment initiatives. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.