INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL AS A LENS FOR IMPROVED HEALTHCARE PERFORMANCE: A STRUCTURED REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Intangible resources gain relevant importance in healthcare organizations, especially when there is a need to improve performance. While a large stream of research exists in knowledge- intensive industries, the role of intellectual capital in improving performance of healthcare organizations has gained more attention only in the last years. This article is an investigation of the existing literature on healthcare performance through the lens of intellectual capital. A total of 30 articles were reviewed with the aim to understand how literature is evolving, what are the most researched components and what are the limits of extant research in providing a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Descriptive and content analysis of the articles revealed a growing trend of publication in the last years, while the geographical distribution of publications revealed Italy as the dominant country for contributions in the domain. Moreover, a classification of research in clusters according to the topic investigation, revealed nine possible clusters in extant research, where two of the clusters consist of detached themes and basically are related to patient-centred care and professional incompetence. This study shows how intellectual capital has evolved from skill-focused investigations to patient-centred care, sustainable health, and innovative technologies, while it provides insights for managers to improve healthcare organizations' performance by prioritizing specific components of intellectual capital. Overall, intellectual capital is an important tool for enhanced performance, and an outcome-oriented approach may help organizations gain benefits such as value creation, improved end user satisfaction, maximization of competitive advantage and much more.