HR Portals and HR Metrics for Intellectual Capital

Development

Dino Ruta

Institute of Organization and Information Systems, Bocconi University

Department of Organization and Human Resource Management

SDA Bocconi School of Management

Via Bocconi, 8. Milan 20136, Italy

Abstract. Intellectual capital is nowadays considered a key issue when analys-

ing critical determinants to company performance. It represents one of the main

and difficult to imitate source for sustainable competitive advantage and it

helps organizations, which can create, maintain, measure and leverage it, gen-

erate a superior performance. Companies, according to their strategic needs,

generate a unique mix of human, social and organizational capital and exploit it

to achieve their strategy. This paper intends to explore how information tech-

nology, and in particular HR portals, could help the organization to really be

able to create a superior competitive advantage by leveraging its intangible as-

sets coherently with its strategy . In addition, the paper provides a deep analysis

of HR portals implementation benefits, focusing on their contribute at measur-

ing and aligning intellectual capital to company strategy.

1 The Intellectual Capital

1.1 Definitions and Dimensions

Intellectual capital can be defined as the sum of all knowledge that can be utilized to

boost a company performance sustaining its competitive advantage. According to

Yound, Subramanian and Snell [13], two are the peculiarities of this capital which

have to be considered:

1. Knowledge exists and is created a numerous levels within and outside the

organization and all of it has to be considered intellectual capital

2. Only the knowledge that is used and leverage in order to create competi-

tive advantage can be considered intellectual capital

I want to thank the reviewers of this paper which is at the early stages of its development.

They gave me many suggestions to improve the manuscript and for time constraints I was

able to adopt only some of them in this new version. Many others will be helpful for the next

steps of my research.

Ruta D. (2007).

HR Portals and HR Metrics for Intellectual Capital Development.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Human Resource Information Systems, pages 85-98

DOI: 10.5220/0002432200850098

 SciTePress

So, intellectual capital has both an extra-organizational dimension, constituted by

all the knowledge the company can attract from the outside players it interacts with

(e.g. customers, suppliers, competitors...) and an intra-organizational one, which is

constituted by all the knowledge, relationships and knowledge transfer/storage tools

the company possesses. Furthermore this global knowledge has to be effectively

utilised in order to be considered part of the intellectual capital, as it is essential to

maintain a strict connection between knowledge/brainpower and company’s perform-

ance and creation of superior economic value over time. According to Feiwal [8],

intellectual capital meant more than just “intellect as pure intellect” but rather incor-

porated a degree of “intellectual action”: intellectual capital is not only a static intan-

gible asset per se but an ideological process with an end [2] .

Therefore I will proceed in this study by defining intellectual capital as “the sum

of al knowledge an organization is able to leverage in the process of conducting busi-

ness to gain competitive advantage”.

As stated before, this knowledge expresses itself through different levels and in-

struments. A common classification, developed in recent years, presents intellectual

capital as a multidimensional entity, formed by three basic type of capital: human

capital, social capital and intellectual capital.

Human capital is composed by the personal and individual knowledge each em-

ployees within the organization has. His/her knowledge, ability and skills are part of

the company’s knowledge treasure and are a unique source of innovation and strate-

gic renewal. Human capital has been a highly discussed topic [25] [7], gaining a gen-

eral consensus about its conceptualisation. Four are the individual factors which,

combined, define human capital: the genetic inheritance, the education, the experi-

ence, attitudes about life and business [9] . Recent studies also observed how this

typology of capital does not naturally develop and evolve [13]. Rather, HRM, IT and

R&D investments are her particularly important in order to really foster and exploit

human capital.

A second expression of the intellectual capital is constituted by social capital,

where I mean the knowledge in groups and network of people [18] . The focus is here

on the relationships, the connections within different individuals and parts of the

organization and their ability to create and share knowledge as well on the potential

resources, knowledge embedded within, available through and derived from this

network of relationships. Summing up, social capital comprises both the network and

the assets that may be mobilized through that network Within this dimension, the

extra-organizational aspect of intellectual capital promptly emerges: such relation-

ships are not limited to the ones existing within organization’s boundaries but can

extend to linkages with customers, suppliers, partners, and so on. It is worth to be

mentioned that interaction is an essential precondition for the development and main-

tenance of high levels of social capital. Social capital has a tendency to accumulate in

networks structures in which linkages are strong, multidimensional and reciprocal.

Organizations can offer many opportunities for sustained interaction and conversa-

tions, by intentional design or by chance, helping the emergence of many facets of

social capital [19].

The last component of intellectual capital comprehends a more extended and for-

malized kind of knowledge, and it is called organizational capital. It includes all the

knowledge within the company which has been institutionalised or codified through

some instruments. Tools like databases, routines, manuals, and patents belong to this

category. It has to be underlined how this is the only part constituting the intellectual

capital which could be really considered as owned by the enterprise, as, once knowl-

edge is externalised and stored, it becomes independent.

1.2 Interconnection and Combinations of Intellectual Capital

Even though intellectual capital presents a multidimensional nature, each of those

three categories can not be created, developed and leveraged alone. There is a strict

interconnection between them and a single action on one of those will surely impact

on intellectual capital in its totality. Patterns of coexistence among those three types

of capital have been identified but, as we have seen, recent studies have also focused

on those three variables independently, analysing which of those dimensions might

impact more on effective superior economic performance and how.

Empirical evidence, showed in fact that most companies have a tendency to focus

primary on one kind of capital and its development [13].

Different organizations, according to their peculiar strategy and tasks, will be more

likely to concentrate and focus on developing one of those three capitals. Contin-

gency plays here a fundamental role, if related to the predisposition of the company to

expand either human, social or organizational capital. According to an empirical

research carried out by Subramanian and Youndt [26], a focused effort on the devel-

opment of one typology of capital could directly improve a company ability to radi-

cally or incrementally innovate. Which also could be read as: a company, depending

on its need of incremental (e.g. consulting companies) or radical (e.g. pharmaceutical)

innovation will have to concentrate on the development of one particular dimension

of intellectual capital. The research, through the study of about 300 companies,

showed some interesting issues; the increase of organizational capital has been dem-

onstrated to be directly correlated to the improvement of incremental innovation:

institutionalised knowledge accumulated in and utilized through databases, processes

and systems seems to help the organization reinforce its prevailing knowledge and

augment incremental innovative capabilities. This is very remarkable, if we consider

some observations made by Christensen and Overdorf [5], who state “at firms such as

McKinsey & Co. processes and values are become so powerful that it almost does not

matter which people get assigned to which project teams. In addition, an effective

mix of human capital and social capital proportionally strives organizations’ ability to

create radical innovation. Those findings surely underline the importance for each

company to better understand which typology of capital needs to be leveraged the

most in order to create an “ad hoc” contingent mix of those three capital which would

lead to a superior performance.

It is anyway very important to consider that recent studies have observed how,

generally speaking, social capital is by far the strongest predictor of performance

[14], as its correct management may enable the organization to more efficiently use

their knowledge base by leveraging it across the entire organization and therefore

eliminating some system inefficiencies (redundancies, duplications, organizational

costs). In particular, we can state that social capital is the contextual complement of

human capital, as in most instances employees’ ability to leverage their intelligence,

education and experience depends in some part on how well, to whom and from

whom they exchange information and knowledge [28]. Therefore, to effectively lev-

erage investments in human capital, it may be imperative for organizations to invest

in the development of social capital, to provide the necessary conduits for their core

knowledge workers to network and share their expertise [26]. But social capital, be-

side being a tool to diffuse and exploit the intellectual capital already present in the

organization, plays a predominant role also in the creation process of intellectual

capital. According to Nahapiet and Ghoshal [18], intellectual capital can be crated by

two processes: combination and exchange. As far as combination is concerned, we

could say that all knowledge creation naturally involves making new combinations,

either by combining elements in new connections and associations or by re-

combining previously associated elements through new kind of combinations. Re-

garding exchange, we must say that it can be considered as a prerequisite for resource

combination and therefore for intellectual capital creation. Relationships and linkages

between different individuals and areas of the same organization could promote a

process of combining the knowledge and the experience of those different parties,

which could decide to exchange their resources in order to create new intellectual

capital. So, as well as exchange contributes to the creation of social capital, social

capital promotes the creation of exchange opportunities, therefore fostering the ability

of individuals to combine knowledge in the creation of new intellectual capital.

Exchange and combination between individuals requires also some pre-conditions,

essential to the creation of new knowledge [17]; first of all there must be an opportu-

nity to make the combination or exchange. Different parties must have some tools to

communicate and share their knowledge in order to create new intellectual capital.

Recent developments in technology and their adoption in many organizations surely

represent an improvement in this direction. Second, the parties must perceive such

combination/exchange to create value and, thirdly, they must be adequately motivated

to share their resources. Psychological contracts play here an essential role again, as

organizations should explicit the importance of this process and its positive valuation

for the whole community. Lastly, the individuals must possess some combination

capabilities in order to make this creation of intellectual capital effectively possible.

Summing up, social capital also facilitates the development of intellectual capital

by affecting the conditions necessary for exchange and combination to occur [18].

1.3 HR and Intellectual Capital

Human Resources Management (HRM) activities as well as other staff functions

(R&D, IT) play also a crucial role in the promotion of intellectual capital. In particu-

lar, intellectual capital can be considered as a mediating construct between Human

Resource (HR) configuration and organizational performance: HR activities do not

directly boost company’s performance, but rather they help the development of the

three types of capital which, in turn, drive organizational performance and strategic

one [14]. In the two authors’ findings, HR configurations could boost either human

capital (through intensive/extensive staffing, competitive pay, intensive/extensive

training programs, promotions), social capital (through broad banding, team structure,

socialization, mentoring) and organizational capital (through soft management system

to motivate employees to share and record their knowledge and experience and HR

policies that reinforced knowledge capture and access). But HR’s role can not be

limited to setting some self-configurations which lead to an increase of intellectual

capital.

Given the importance of contingency in order to define which is the optimum equi-

librium between the three categories of capital, HR function should also focus on

understanding how to align company’s strategy and intellectual capital configura-

tions.

All actions implemented by the HR function and its representatives need to aim at

aligning company’s strategic path with employees values and behaviours. Different

HR practices can be used in order to elicit from employees behaviours which are

consistent to the company strategy [29]: communication, motivation, remuneration

could all be considered valid drivers.

This also recall the concept of agency theory, where organizations that do a better

job at aligning the interest of the employer (principal) and the employee (agent) will

achieve greater performance [6]. And HRM is one of the main mechanisms by which

managers integrate the actions of individuals to keep them conformant with the inter-

est of the firm [24].

HR system and practices can be unique in their casual ambiguity and synergistic in

how they enhance firm competencies, and thus difficult to reproduce [15]. A system

of HR practices, with all the complementarities and interdependencies among the set

of practices, would be in fact impossible to imitate.

The measurement of intellectual capital has also recently begun an interesting

topic in organizational and strategic literature: it has become necessary to define the

role of the workforce (and its contribution to intellectual capital creation) in the stra-

tegic success of the firm [1]. As intellectual capital is becoming the pre-eminent re-

source for creating economic value, how do we measure it [22]? How are intellectual

capital management and intellectual capital measurement related one to the other?

Are we sure that a poor understanding of intellectual capital metric measures will lead

to a reduced capacity to effectively manage this important asset [4]?.

2 The HR Portal

2.1 Basic Features and History

Portals, blogs, wikis, groupware seem to be very popular words in contemporary

enterprises. The current focus is increasingly moving toward a strategy where com-

munication, collaboration and information exchange are gaining a primary role. For-

ward-looking companies are considering a way to group their global intangible assets

in a unique tool, where people can share their knowledge and experiences in order to

increase the company global intellectual capital stock. To this extent, HR portal can

be considered both a instrument for the creation and development of organizational

capital (is helps the integration of existing formalized knowledge) and a relevant part

itself of a company’s organizational capital, in the way it digitalizes and stores a huge

portion of the company’s intellectual capital.

The HR portal notion was officially born in 1998, when an American financial in-

stitution, Merril Lynch, used for the first time this word to describe an integrated

access point to its corporate information [11]. In this occasion, Shilakes and Tylman

[23] defined the HR portal as “an application that enables companies to unlock inter-

nally and externally stored information, and provides users with a single gateway to

personalized information needed to make informed business decisions”. This defini-

tion underlines two basic characteristics of the HR portal: the fact that the portal aims

at centralizing information which would otherwise remain dispersed anywhere out-

side and inside the organization, and the fact that it tries to provide the single user

with aggregated personalized information, according to his/her strategic needs for the

organization performance and success.

HR portal development is strictly dependent from the introduction and develop-

ment of Internet and the World Wide Web: TCP/IP protocol, web servers, web

browsers and HTML are the IT prerequisites to the diffusion of such a popular enter-

prise tool. In conclusion, we can imagine an enterprise portal as a web page which

combines access to all significant information on the corporate network into a gate-

way, bringing together the information an employee needs in a single place, thanks to

the use of different software applications.

HR portals are usually organized in four macro areas [21], each containing pre-

cious portions of knowledge for the final user:

- The HOME folder is mainly dedicated to corporate general information: dif-

ferent areas can lead to different information, like some links to most popu-

lar access functions, a search engine to quicker surf in the portal, People

Finder to gain details about colleagues, a Q&A area, where most frequent

questions are answered, a Feedback and Support area.

- The LIFE/WORK folder, where employees have personal and password pro-

tected access. This represents a connection area with the HR function: in-

formation is exchanged and transactions with the company are done here.

- The ORGANIZATION folder is a more content/country specific area. In-

formation about a specific division or country branch is shared. A sur-

vey/poll area is here often included, as well as a bulletin boards.

- The MY@PORTAL folder, which represents the most personalized are of

the whole HR portal. Each individual can customize this part, according to

their interests and needs. This often includes calendar of events and reminder

such as a personal agenda.

All those different areas should include some different functionalities, which are

normally parts of a typical HR portal content, such as:

- Employee self service area (personal details, salary and career history, stock

purchase plan, expertise areas)

- Personnel database (salary planning, performance evaluation area, reports

area)

- Staffing and job posting area

- E-learning area (course enrolment, courses information and contents, virtual

classes access, training history)

- Archive of company press releases, presentations and documents

- Information on company strategies, best practices and knowledge manage-

ment

2.2 HR Portal Characteristics and Benefits

HR portals are aimed at accomplishing different and important functions, according

to some basic characteristics they have [3]; first of all they represent an information

pool for the user, aggregating data from disparate sources which could be either ex-

ternal or internal. It is a common repository which consolidates information previ-

ously dispersed around the company. This integration process can, through portals, be

more dynamic and adaptive. Contents from different documents can be combined,

changes in data and information captured and knowledge flows monitored. To this

end, it serves as a web directs directory of categories, maintaining those and grouping

content links. The portal also allow the integration of various business applications

and help the employee access to all type of information/programs he/she needs: HR

portals are aimed at lowering barriers during acquisition of information, decision

making and execution of activities. Scalability is in fact a very important HR portal

characteristic: the portal can support various server types and numbers as well as it

can support unlimited application processing servers. Portals are then interactive

instruments, which mean they enable bi-directional exchange flows: they allow users

to question and share information. In this way, they differentiate from the simple

intranet, which previously operated as an electronic board, and was mono-directional

(organization-to-employee). Top down communication is still possible now, but it is

surrounded by many other bilateral transactions and an increased vertical and hori-

zontal interaction. They also allow the user to personalize the use they make of the

portal, tailoring ad hoc information, personalizing view on corporate information, and

adapting the portal interface. This personalization process is extremely important,

because it enables people to set the portal in accordance with their own needs and

wishes. In this way the HR portal really replaces the worktable and becomes an inimi-

table tool for each employee. Therefore, reach-ability of the HR portal has to guaran-

tee: employees (who can be inside or outside the company), customers, distributors,

suppliers and so on must have access to some areas of the portal, according to their

needs and authorisations, and the company too should have access to information of

its business partners via portal. All those data should be directly connected to the

individual and not to the computer, meaning that users can access their data from

anywhere and anytime they wish, with a simple assistance of a username and a pass-

word. Portals have usually also controlled access to specific resources. Limitation of

the access can be used also at the personalization of the access because the intranet

portal can be adjusted to different access levels. This establishes a sort of hierarchy

according to the role within the company. Security is also an issue, when considering

enterprise portals: data and information have to be protected against unauthorised

access, but at the same time the access should be quick and easy. Therefore the portal

have to be integrated with all the existing security schemas and log-in/log-off proce-

dures constantly monitored.

Several benefits can be identified when considering a successful implemented HR

portal within an organization.

First of all we have a general increase in efficiency within the whole organiza-

tion’s knowledge management processes [20].

Employees are now able to save time and effort, as information is now grouped

and aggregate from different sources in a unique pool of data, which will not have the

typical different architectures, different ownership and duplicative content that vari-

ous departments’ single databases usually have [27]. The whole organizational capital

can now be explored and exploited through a unique effective tool which organizes

existing information sources: information will be easier to locate and share. Search of

pertinent information will be minimized and there will be an increase of choice of

portal software products. Furthermore, personalization of interface and contents also

helps get the individual user to set up the views for legacy information that are most

valuable for him/her and avoid wading through all the other views and functionalities

of the legacy system. Employees collaboration can also be fostered by implementing

an HR portal: workers will have an efficient and effective instrument to get in contact

more easily, alleviating corporate fragmentation issues.

On the other side, individual employees will now be responsible for uploading

some kind of personal data (e.g. personal information, etc) as well as directly and

autonomously consult some areas of personal interest (e.g. compensations, benefits,

working hours, holidays). This certainly translates into an increased efficiency in

terms of time and costs as well as into a reduced (or eliminated) redundancy of data

(often inconsistent) within the organization, and the possibility of some real time

information flows, making the whole organizational information system more dy-

namic and fast to adapt to new environments. Costs and time wastes related to some

specific processes, before assigned to the HR staff will now be eliminated.

Another benefit given by the introduction of an HR portal is that it leads to a natu-

ral reconfiguration of the HR function and its tasks, which will now really turn into a

more strategic HR function. HRM can be considered strategic when there is a clear

and explicit link between employees and their actions and the strategic objectives of

the firm, in order to improve organizational performance and develop an organiza-

tional culture oriented to innovation and flexibility [10] [16]. This only happens if HR

staff becomes a relevant player when defining organizational strategy and implement-

ing it, and HR’s new role in the implementation of the portal together with its man-

agement, surely gives HR a chance to wear a more strategic role. HR staff will now

be responsible for this critical task: align people to firm’s strategy. They will be ac-

countable for monitoring resources and their development as well as for creating

suitable opportunities to foster this development. The use of a technological instru-

ment like an HR portal finally allows HR staff to differentiate interventions to the

workforce, taking into account individual differences, preferences, capabilities, role

within the organization and future organizational and strategic needs, extracting the

highest value from the human capital. Given this new HR strategic orientation, peo-

ple are now an economic asset, and therefore need metrics and measures to assess

them. They will represent more that a simple cost for the firm and it is HR responsi-

bility to understand their needs and exploit their capabilities, in order to maintain and

develop this strategic intellectual capital they constitute and contribute to. HR func-

tion will also have the possibility to answer employees and organization’s needs

adopting a new business and strategic point of view, trying to effectively measure the

value of intellectual capital.

Technology role, and in particular HR portal role, will now play a fundamental

role in helping HR developing a measurement system aimed at monitoring organiza-

tional performance and individual contribution to that. This is due to the HR portals

ability to serve as a dynamic database, recording all transactions and events in a par-

ticular time frame. They would act as a perfect recorder, able to trace the continuous

flow of data generated and to store them into a system, avoiding duplicates and re-

dundancies. A huge quantity of data, both structured and unstructured2, could be

saved and stored, but especially managed, in order to provide a broader and deeper

view of the organization and its intellectual capital. Data can now be multiplied and

assembled in millions of ways and new relationships might emerge: this multiplica-

tive effect is given by the chance to explore new queries and data combinations which

are now affecting a higher amount of data. The organizations could now be perceived

as a continuous flow of facts, each of them monitored, recorded, and used for differ-

ent purposes: they can offer an historical trend, a present picture and a future simula-

tion. The HR portal allows the HR function to aggregate and disaggregate those data

in infinite ways and obtain new insights in the organization development and per-

formance, as well as in its own role. In particular, the HR portal could serve as a

precondition for the development of a Business Intelligence system, which would

help the HR staff to increase its decision making process effectiveness and quality.

An effective Business Intelligence System would allow an advanced management of

data, through some particular functionalities: data mining, for example, would allow

finding logic relations between uncorrelated data. Modelling would help simulating

scenarios, or scorecards would present some static metrics, visualizing them through

graphs.

Individuals can now be tracked in a more efficient and effective way: their data,

besides from being constantly updated by themselves and by the system, will now be

constantly ready for any investigation. There will be the possibility to aggregate them

in various combination and to collect them in a personal folder which will now in-

clude different types of information: administrative (personal data, vacations, wage

track, career track, etc.), task performance related (e.g. tasks, number of projects,

succeeded projects, contribution to firm’s revenues, etc.) and contextual performance

related (e.g. trainings attended, team working, etc.). Employees’ contribution to the

creation of intellectual capital will now be monitored in a more rigorous way, and

will be based on a consistent measurement system.

This HR portal benefit is confirmed by some empirical cases, where the UPIM

case study (www.sas.com) embodies a particular representative one. UPIM imple-

mented a HR-specific data warehouse which is loaded with information extracted

from a variety of specialized systems covering personal records, payroll, timecard,

personnel cost budgeting, management by objectives, skill management, and the

receipt of curricula vitae. "It allows us to map skills and people, pointing out critical

areas, and to monitor key performance indicators through an HR dashboard. We can

see at a glance changes in the company as they occur. Critically, it enables us to spot

talent within the organization, and deploy it where it is required” says De Iaco, Chief

Information Officer at UPIM.

Structured data are represented by relational databases, legacy data stores and various report-

ing system. Unstructured data is basically constituted by e-mail, instant messaging, files and

stored documents and systems for documents management.

3 Propositions and a New Integrative Model

The company’s workforce should always be concentrated at increasing the stock of

intellectual capital, as well as at doing it in a way which is consistent to the company

strategy. An organization’s specific strategic posture substantially influence the im-

pact of HR practices on performance: the relationship between the use of specific HR

practices and organizational performance is posited to be contingent on an organiza-

tion strategy and there is empirical evidence for saying that a tighter fit between hu-

man resource competencies and strategy leads to a superior performance [12]. As far

as HR portals are concerned, HR will be the part of the organization accountable for

their implementation and management; they will be responsible for choosing the

contents and the proper configuration. Which mean they will decide how to distribute

the HOME, LIFE/WORK, ORGANIZATION and MY@PORTAL areas and how to

configure them. They will fix the different components and this configuration will

intrinsically communicate the users, the employees on which dimension of the intel-

lectual capital the company’s strategy relies on the most and which one it is more

appropriate to foster. Different areas in fact have a different impact on the expansion

of human, social or organizational capital; different applications can be declined ac-

cording to their contribution to the development of the different components of intel-

lectual capital.

• …………

*****

• keeping updated on some

branch/divisions issues

• sharing of particular information related

to the specific division

• NEWS AND INFO

***

• express a personal opinion on a

particular topic of common interest

• POLL AREA

ORGANIZATION

• ……………

****

• tracking of personal knowledge

development

• TRAININGS

***

• autonomous update of personal

information

• tracking of administrative and

accounting information

• PERSONAL

ADMINISTRATIVE

FOLDER

MY@PORTAL

•………….

• DOCUMENTS

FINDER

• PEOPLE FINDER

Application

….

Human

….

***

Social

….

• ……………..

***

• retrieve extra and intra-firm documents

• upload documents

• retrieve people within the company

• retrieve experts within the company

HOME

Organizational

Category of Capital

Developed

Functions that can

be performed

Area of the

portal

• …………

*****

• keeping updated on some

branch/divisions issues

• sharing of particular information related

to the specific division

• NEWS AND INFO

***

• express a personal opinion on a

particular topic of common interest

• POLL AREA

ORGANIZATION

• ……………

****

• tracking of personal knowledge

development

• TRAININGS

***

• autonomous update of personal

information

• tracking of administrative and

accounting information

• PERSONAL

ADMINISTRATIVE

FOLDER

MY@PORTAL

•………….

• DOCUMENTS

FINDER

• PEOPLE FINDER

Application

….

Human

….

***

Social

….

• ……………..

***

• retrieve extra and intra-firm documents

• upload documents

• retrieve people within the company

• retrieve experts within the company

HOME

Organizational

Category of Capital

Developed

Functions that can

be performed

Area of the

portal

Fig. 1. Example of HR portal configuration and declination according to the different dimen-

sions of intellectual capital.

HR staff, through the configuration and management of the HR portal, can com-

municate the importance of different types of intellectual capital to the workforce and

align their contribution to the company strategy.

Preposition 1: The HR portal configuration in respect to the different dimensions of

intellectual capital reflects company’s strategy. Its structure, configured by a strate-

gic HR function, will be an immediate tool to communicate to the workforce the opti-

mal mix of human, social, organizational capital is aligned with the strategy pursued

by the company.

Moreover, a successful implementation of an HR portal within the organization

will help the whole firm to better measure its entire stock of intellectual capital, in

terms of human, social and organizational one. Furthermore, the HR portal constitutes

an instrument for analysing this stock and understanding, by some particular metrics,

the individual contribution to this stock (task and contextual performance). As seen in

the first chapter, task performance is usually pretty easy to identify and evaluate. And

this is a process usually delegated to the management, which judges employees’ per-

formance and report this evaluation to the HR function. The use of an HR portal

would now make the HR staff able to directly monitor and evaluate the employees’

individual contextual performance and their personal contribution to the creation and

maintenance of intellectual capital within the organization. If intellectual capital has

been defined as the core asset for the organization’s success, it is necessary to de-

velop a tool to measure the contribution to this important asset. The HR portal will be

an organizational tool to formalize this individual contribution and to add the em-

ployees’ participation to the creation of intellectual capital to the typical performance-

evaluation-feedback loop.

HR portal would therefore allow the monitoring of the intellectual capital devel-

opment within the firm, focusing on the individuals’ participation to this strategically

fundamental process.

Those collected data and information could now increase the possibility to focus

on some metrics which really capture also the strategic importance of the workforce

(and therefore of the intellectual capital created by the workforce, in terms of human,

social and organizational contribution). With the workforce scorecard concept, we

pointed out that an effective measurement system should be first of all based on the

real ability to collect some data; the HR portal would surely help the company to

improve this data collection process, especially making the collection of some spe-

cific data easier and faster.

HR portal applications could therefore be declined according to its contribution to

the formulation of some HR metrics, both for organizations and individuals, as fol-

lows:

•…………

• Post Course Skill

Enhancement

• Skill Gap

Analysis

• Skill Gap Trend

Analysis

•Training

Summary

• Skill Absence by

Employee

• Course Quality

Detail

• Remuneration Index

• Salary Analysis

Possible

measures at

organizational

level

***

Organi

zationa

Social

***

Human

Category of

Capital

Developed

•……..• …………….• ……………

•Skill Gap by

Employee

• Skill Level by

Employee

• Skill Improvers

by Employee

• Future Training

Summary

• Future Training

Courses

• tracking of personal

knowledge development

•TRAININGS

•Employee Search

Form

•Employee Costs

• autonomous update of

personal information

•tracking of

administrative and

accounting information

• PERSONAL

ADMINISTRATIVE

FOLDER

MY@PORTAL

Application

Possible

measures at

individual

level

Functions that

can be performed

Area of the

portal

•…………

• Post Course Skill

Enhancement

• Skill Gap

Analysis

• Skill Gap Trend

Analysis

•Training

Summary

• Skill Absence by

Employee

• Course Quality

Detail

• Remuneration Index

• Salary Analysis

Possible

measures at

organizational

level

***

Organi

zationa

Social

***

Human

Category of

Capital

Developed

•……..• …………….• ……………

•Skill Gap by

Employee

• Skill Level by

Employee

• Skill Improvers

by Employee

• Future Training

Summary

• Future Training

Courses

• tracking of personal

knowledge development

•TRAININGS

•Employee Search

Form

•Employee Costs

• autonomous update of

personal information

•tracking of

administrative and

accounting information

• PERSONAL

ADMINISTRATIVE

FOLDER

MY@PORTAL

Application

Possible

measures at

individual

level

Functions that

can be performed

Area of the

portal

Fig. 2. An HR portal sub-area, according to its contribution to the creation of intellec-

tual capital in its three forms and to the measurement of some HR metrics.

Proposition 2: A successful implementation of an HR portal will lead to a more effec-

tive measurement of the stock of intellectual capital within the organization, helping

the development of a strategic intellectual capital measurement system.

In particular:

Proposition 2a: It provides some ad hoc metrics in order to monitor the stock and

development of the whole intellectual capital within the organization

Proposition 2b: It measures the individual contribute to the intellectual capital stock

through the creation of personal folders

As described before, HR staff, through the configuration and management of the

HR portal, can communicate on which particular mix of intellectual capital the com-

pany is relying on and the subsequent expected workforce contribution to it. HR por-

tal represents, in this sense, a tool for formalizing psychological contract to employ-

ees. Organizational expectations in terms of involvement in the process of intellectual

capital creation find here a possibility to be made explicit: configuring HR portal in a

particular way, the HR staff automatically communicates and incentives the work-

force to participate this important process.

4 Discussion and Conclusion

The present paper provides an integrative model for intellectual capital and IT, in its

particular form represented by the HR portal. The focus is particularly on the contri-

bution that HR portals can offer to the communication of strategy throughout the firm

and to establishment of some HR metrics to measure intellectual capital stock.

HR portals, through their easy access to a substantial amount of data and through

their characteristics of integration, personalization and interaction could be a strategic

tool for HR in order to perform their role in a more effective and efficient way; the

case, through a deep overview of the company’s intellectual capital, as well as of its

HR portal, demonstrated that HR portals, beside being an extremely important tool

for the development of intellectual capital, can:

- provide some effective measures for intellectual capital and its different di-

mensions;

- communicate, through their own configuration, which optimal mix of hu-

man, social and organizational capital best answers the company’s strategy,

and therefore leverage this mix;

- help formalize psychological contract and, by this, align organization and

employees’ expectations about their contribution to intellectual capital crea-

tion and maintenance.

Those findings, together with the previous literature on HR portals, underline the

strategic role of this IT tool and the necessity of its management in order to achieve

superior competitive advantage and performance.

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