A Relational Based-View of Intellectual Capital in High-Tech Firms

The Resource-Based View (RBV) has tried to test the role of strategic resources on sustained competitive advantage and superior performance. Although this theory has found several flaws in order to reach its objective effectively (Priem & Butler, 2001), recent proposals have suggested that these problems can be overcome (Peteraf & Barney, 2003). This solution requires paying a greater attention to the analysis of knowledge stocks, developing a mid-range theory: the Intellectual Capital-Based View (Reed, Lubatkin & Srinivasan, 2006). This mid-range and pracmatic theory allows the hypotheses development and empirical testing in a more effective way that the RBV. There is a certain degree of general agreement about the presence of human capital and organizational capital as the main components of intellectual capital, as well as about the fact that the configuration of knowledge stocks will vary from one industry and firm to another one. Taking these assumptions as a starting point, this paper explores the configuration of intellectual capital that can be empirically found on a sample of high-technology firms. Our findings highlight the importance of relational capital, which must be divided into business and alliance capital, so the strategic alliances play a relevance role in the type of firms that have been included in our research.