Intellectual Capital as Social Capital in Non-Profit Organizations: A Sistematic Literature Review

Despite recent trends to re-evaluate the potential contribution of intangible assets in economic and social organizations, the Non-Profit Sector (NPS) is still characterized by some reticence to consider the relevance of these resources from a managerial, financial, and organizational perspective. This is even truer for Intellectual Capital (IC), which nowadays among the intangibles has been widely recognized as key success factor for the value creation of any socio-economic organization. This research, deploying a systematic literature review (SLR), aims to ascertain whether and how relevant studies about Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) have explored the potential beneficial effects that could be generated by efficient governance and management of their IC, with specific regard to the influence that IC may exert as SC. The results emerging from the analysis have showed that so far, from a quantitative point of view, the interest about this specific issue has not been constant and systematic, while, from a qualitative point of view, three themes seem to be mostly investigated (institutional scope, human resources, and operational functioning).