Intellectual Capital in Polish Corporate Groups Current Trends and Future Challenges

Corporate groups, their functioning, management systems and aspects of efficiency remain in the center of academic research and debate. Research searching for functioning patterns and performance of corporate groups attracted interest of both academics and practitioners also in Poland, particularly during privatization processes. Analyses show that the transition challenges, economic reforms as well as conditions of poor investor protection, inefficient stock market and weak legal system led to dynamic development of corporate groups in Poland. Besides the structural and transactional reasons for emergence of corporate groups the development of intellectual capital, close relations of founders and executives and access to unique know how and market experience play a crucial role. In many cases the corporate groups has been established to take advantage of the combined intellectual capital of the companies. Although, it is clear that the synergy effect in terms of intellectual capital is crucial for building corporate group, it is still challenging to assess and report its value. There are some attempts to set up the standards for reporting intellectual capital (ie. EFFAS initiative), but it seems that reporting intellectual capital of corporate groups is much more challenging than of individual companies. It is still discussed if the group intellectual capital should be analyzed separately for subsidiaries when group relations are mostly financial character. The paper is based on research conducted on the sample of selected Polish corporate groups and concentrates on their functioning paying major attention of the process of development of intellectual capital within their complex structure. The research delivers insights both of the importance of intellectual capital as a tool for building competitive advantage in rising economy and the challenges of assessing and reporting intellectual capital in corporate groups.