Intellectual Capital and Resource Integration Capability in Decision Making Processes: The Moderating Role of Managerial Capability

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly leveraging intellectual capital to enhance their capacity for resource integration and decision-making, which is expected to benefit their strategic planning. However, much remains unknown about how intellectual capital facilitates decision-making. By integrating theories of intellectual capital and upper echelon theory with evidence from SMEs, we hypothesize that intellectual capital is associated with resource integration capability, which in turn influences decision-making in SMEs, particularly when managerial capabilities are well-developed. Our large-scale survey-based studies of SMEs support this mediated moderation model, indicating that the positive effect of intellectual capital on decision-making through resource integration capability is contingent upon managerial capability. This underscores the importance of both resource integration capability and managerial capability in leveraging intellectual capital for SMEs.