A Comparative Study of the Effects of Intellectual Capital on the Organizational performance in public and Private Sectors of Iran Banking Industry

Intellectual Capital (IC) has been described as intangible assets that may be used as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. However, intellectual capital components have to interact, to create value. Previous studies demonstrated that intellectual capital is positively and significantly associates with organizational performance. The purpose of this study is to consolidate these findings and investigate three elements of intellectual capital, i.e. human capital, structural capital, and customer capital, and also their inter-relationships within two banking industry sectors (public and private) in Iran. The study was conducted by using a psychometrically validated questionnaire which was originally administrated in Canada. To explore the items and the constructs we have used principal component analysis (PCA) and linear structural relations (LISREL). The final specified models in this study showed a robust explanation of banking performance variance within Iran banking context which bodes well for future research in alternative contexts. The results indicate that in public sector of Iran banking the human capital, the structural capital, and the customer capital are respectively effective; while in the private sector the most effective capitals are respectively human capital, customer capital, and structural capital. Another difference between these two sectors is the structural capital in the public banks has the most effect on performance while in the private banks the human capital and customer capital have the most effect on performance.