An Empirical Insight on Effects of Constituent Derivatives of Intellectual Capital on Pharmaceutical Distribution SMEs Performance in KPK - Pakistan

Abstract

Intellectual capital is related to as well documented knowledge (e.g. drawings, manuals, models, etc.) as intangible resources such as traditions, experiences, conscious knowledge, unconscious knowledge and tacit knowledge. Literature emphasize firms that to get competitive advantages; they must give much focus to their knowledge assets known as intellectual capital (IC). However, the literature gives limited information on relative importance of different key/constituent components/ingredients of IC. Further, published empirical studies results are from the western world while in-depth explorations from the developing world/countries are lacking. Therefore, this study presents key components/ingredients of intellectual capital found in pharmaceutical SMEs in Pakistan. The data was collected from 225 registered distribution pharmaceutical SMEs operating/working in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The empirical analysis showed that human and spiritual capital was regarded to have significantly positive effects and that customer, structural, social and technological capitals showed to have low effects in this industrial sector, which was an astonishing result. Some explanations of that are given in the paper.