Only half of investment by firms is in physical capital, such as buildings and machinery. The other half is in intangible assets, such as branding, software and training. This has been true for the past two decades or more in the UK, but only if you step beyond the measures in the National Accounts, which include only some of the recognised intangible assets. This paper surveys ongoing work at the Office for National Statistics to develop measures of investment in intangible assets, using new insights and innovative approaches. In particular, this paper reviews developments in three areas: in-house branding investments, employer-funded training investments, and in-house investments in organisational capital. We reconsider some of the key assumptions made in the literature and propose alternative approaches to measurement. The paper concludes by considering implications of this work, and identifies some of the remaining gaps in the evidence base for measuring intangible assets.

This paper investigates the effects of environmental pressure, human capital, and social capital on organizational effectiveness and decline using a population ecology perspective. Panel data with 1,553 observations from 398 companies spanning 4 years in Taiwan were used for analyses. Research results indicate that several environmental pressure indicators significantly affect organization effectiveness and decline. Although human capital and social capital did not predict our outcome variables, human capital plays a moderating role in explaining the variation of the relationship between environmental pressure and organizational effectiveness. This paper provides a new perspective that suggests that organizations should accumulate intangible assets to resist the threat of external environmental pressure. The leading consumer electronics company Samsung is a good example supporting our argument that investment in human capital can produce commercial benefits, especially in tough economic times.