Even though several studies have been done on intellectual capital, ownership structure, and firm performance, their status has remained uncertain in developing countries like Malaysia. Prior studies have generally focused on a single industry and overlooked the input of all Malaysian non-financial firms. This study investigates the impact of intellectual capital, its components, and ownership structure on firm performance. This study employs a balanced panel data examination for the data of 409 non-financial firms from 11 sectors listed on Bursa, Malaysia for five years (2016–2020). The modified value-added intellectual coefficient model was applied to examine the effect of IC efficiency on firm performance. The empirical findings revealed that IC efficiency, human capital efficiency, structural capital efficiency, capital employed efficiency, and relational capital efficiency are positively and significantly related to firm performance. However, physical and structural capital is the most substantial element of intellectual capital efficiency in augmenting profitability. In addition, government and foreign ownership positively affect firm performance. The research will help managers, policymakers, and investors understand how IC investments increase performance and make prudent investment choices in government and foreign ownership firms.
Digital transformation, one of the key areas of change management in the digital age, is defined as a process of changes by the means of using IR technologies in firm's operation. The extant literature suggests that implementation of digital technologies could improve communication, information flow, thus contributing towards value creation and firm performance. Notwithstanding of scarce financial, human resources and strategic capabilities to adopt new technologies among SMEs (Lee et al., 2020), the firm structure, which is more flexible as compared to large firms, offers opportunity in terms of quick decision making (Ghobakhloo & Ching, 2019) for the owner to adapt the firm's business model with market changes and implement necessary changes to sustain in the business. Moreover, previous studies indicate SMEs gained benefit from technology adoption. Nevertheless, transformation towards digitalisation requires a considerable judgement of decision, investment and effort by management and among the employees.
Keywords: Digitalisation,Digital Transformation, Digital Strategy, SME, Change Management
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