Intellectual Capital in Non-Profit Organizations: A Content Analysis

This paper assumes that the consideration and the role of intangible assets in business organizations has been very marginal and latent for a long period of time. This is particularly relevant for the Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) where the absence of profit aim may lead to an ambiguous assessment of their performance as they are governed by a group of interests and values which, essentially, is vast, unclear, vague, imprecise, heterogeneous and difficult to express with measures. In this sense, this research is aimed is to explore the academic literature on the subject in order to have a deeper understanding of it, thus offering a sort of state of the art for future research. The research, therefore, aims to contribute to the consolidation of a field of research until today, unfortunately, marginal and fragmented, also to evaluate the future ways to scientifically address a very complex issue because of its limitations, but also the enormous potential that it offers. The methodological approach is based on the review of the reference literature to analyze the scientific articles published in the last twenty years.