Developing performance indicators to evaluate organizational intellectual assets of Thai academic libraries

• Main Author: Sriborisutsakul, Somsak
• Published: University of Sheffield 2011
• Subjects: 020
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.531152

Intellectual assets are strategic resources that underlie a library's sustainable growth. Many library experts are striving to design indicators for measuring the intangible sides of library organizations. However, very little effort has been made to develop indicators with specific reference to intellectual assets. The purpose of this study is to apply intellectual capital concepts to academic library settings by exploring types of intellectual assets from a new perspective for library managers, explaining the motivation behind an interest in intangible assessment, and developing indicators to evaluate measurable surrogates for library intellectual assets. The researcher selected the case study methodology to investigate the actual development of indicators at three university libraries in Thailand. Using multiple methods of data collection, document reviews and semi-structured interviews yielded the case descriptions, key success factors associated with intellectual assets, and initial intangible indicators. Small-scale surveys were sequentially undertaken to test user acceptance of the suggested indicators. The case findings from within-case analysis were compared to examine similar patterns across the three case libraries that led to the formation of theoretical propositions and the modification of the conceptual framework for developing intangible indicators. The key findings from this study are as follows: (1) library collections and services can be treated as an additional category of library intangibles because they are derived from a combination of human, structural and relationship assets; (2) two main motives for interest in intangible assessment are tracking progress on knowledge management projects and supplementing library evaluation reports with information on intangibles; and (3) most indicator users at the operations management level place more emphasis on the indicators developed for assessing human assets, as well as on collection and service assets. This research makes a major contribution to knowledge on library performance evaluation by providing the theoretically-informed, empirically-supported propositions that intellectual capital reporting principles are relevant and applicable to internal assessment practices in Thai academic libraries. These propositions may be transferable to other information service units where their contextual conditions are similar to the case study libraries.