Factors affecting the level of intellectual capital statement of firms: A research on BIST firms

Enterprises that want to gain competitive advantage have started to give importance to intangible assets rather than tangible assets. Nowadays, the most important focus of providing competitive advantage for companies is to measure, report and reflect on intellectual capital. The enterprises that have achieved this will have a say in the economy of the future and will have achieved a competitive advantage. Intellectual capital is composed of the human resources that produce information, the information that is owned by the enterprise and all of the customers, suppliers and partners outside the enterprise. In today's economy, intellectual capital has become very important for companies. Firms are now striving to achieve competitive advantage by measuring and reporting intellectual elements and reflecting them on financial statements, paying attention to sustainable strategies. Businesses will be able to bring innovation to the company by managing human capital, organizational capital and customer capital, which are the elements of intellectual capital, in order to gain competitive advantage. The aim of this study is to measure the level of intellectual capital disclosure of firms that publish sustainability report in BIST 100 Index and to measure their relationship with three possible factors by regression analysis. Human capital, which is one of the elements of intellectual capital in the firms analyzed in this study, has been the most explained intellectual capital element. The most explained element of intellectual capital after human capital is organizational capital. The least explained element of intellectual capital is identified as customer capital. There is a positive relationship between the Net Profit and the level of intellectual capital disclosure. In addition, a significant and positive relationship was found between GRI Compliance Level and intellectual capital disclosure level and supported by studies in the literature Keywords: Intellectual Capital, Intellectual Capital Explanation Level, Sustainability, BIST 100