Impact of intellectual capital on exportation performance: Research on the Turkish automotive supplier industry

Intellectual capital is a concept emphasizing the fact that the nonmaterial can create more values than the material, and also envisioning that business enterprises can create values through the development of employee relations, creativity, and innovation. The connection between increasing structural and functional performance of exportation and the accumulation of acquired intellectual capital of a business enterprise in today's databased competitive environment is a highly important issue. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of acquired intellectual accumulation of business enterprises on their exportation performance, which operate in the Turkish automotive supplier industry following an export-based production policy. A survey has been conducted to achieve this goal on 107 enterprises active in automotive supplier industry that appear in "The Research of Most Exporting Companies in Turkey," annually published by The Turkish Exporters Council. It has been determined by this research that the exportation performance of a business enterprise is greatly affected by its intellectual accumulation. The improvement of exportation performance of business enterprises, possessing accumulation of intellectual capital, is more positive as compared to the ones without it, in the aspects of structural, employee, and customer capital. © 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.