Abstract:
The consumption of material goods remains a strong engine of the
economy producing goods and services, but having a destructive effect upon
resources, until their exhaustion. For this reason, during the past two
decades, the economy of developed countries evolves towards
dematerialization, a path towards the sustainable development of the Western
model. A shift has occurred from the economic system where the competitive
advantages mainly depended on material and financial resources managed
and controlled by companies to an economic system where performance is
more and more conditioned by the complex of immaterial resources created
through the previous corporate activity or to which they have access. The
global economic system is therefore on the way of becoming one of
“technological ideas and innovations”, where the potential of corporate
“intellectual capital”, represented by: organizational knowledge and skills
(organizational capital), staff loyalty and cohesion (human capital), company
credibility (relational capital), becomes a competitive lever for economic
survival. Corporate value is and will become more and more immaterial
because economy itself follows this trend. The superiority of market value
compared to the accounting value of a company (its goodwill) is often
explained by the fact that it possesses and develops immaterial capital. By
valuing this type of capital, it is possible to reduce or substitute the other
means necessary to create wealth (human resources, technical means,
financial resources, etc.). It is obvious that the changes that occur in the
global society require enterprises to be socially responsible, preoccupied
with excellence, social value, and investments in intelligence, in the larger
context of knowledge management.
