Intellectual capital in tourism SMEs in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan

The main aim of this study was to examine the effect of the components of intellectual capital on the organizational performance of SMEs operating in tourism sector at Azad Jammu and Kashmir Pakistan.

In this empirical study, survey approach was used and primary data were collected through structured questionnaire. A total of 300 structured questionnaire survey forms were distributed through purposive sampling technique. Two hundred and twenty usable questionnaire survey forms were returned. Six research hypotheses were constructed to achieve the objective of this study. Smart Partial Least Square (PLS) 3 was used to test the proposed research hypotheses.

The findings showed that two out of six hypotheses were supported. Precisely, customer capital has appeared as one of the most important components of intellectual capital in model. The results showed that the overall intellectual capital has effect on the organizational performance of SMEs. Results shed more light on the effects that the components of intellectual capital have on organizational performance of SMEs, particularly in the context of Pakistan.

This research is limited to SMEs in tourism sector in Pakistan and the data were gathered through questionnaire which used mostly subjective measures. Subsequently, findings may not be applicable to other industries. The research contributes to the development of intellectual capital literature focused on the organizational performance in the perspective of SMEs in emerging economies. Future research needs to reach beyond the boundaries and understand the effect of intellectual capital on the performance of organizations.

This study extended the knowledge about the prominence of intellectual capital and its effect on the organizational performance of SMEs. Moreover, this study identified the level of existence and measurement of the six components of intellectual capital in SMEs which enables practitioners to develop adequate strategies to better manage it. To author's best knowledge, this study can be the first empirical study which investigates the impact of intellectual capital on the organizational performance of SMEs operating in tourism sector in Pakistan.