Antecedents of intellectual capital in the public sector environment: a literature review

Abstract Public sector intellectual capital (IC) is vital but continues to be exiguous in the IC literature. This study aims to assess the direction of IC literature for over a decade and a half in the public sector to ascertain prospects for extended research. The literature collection spanned the years 2008–2023. The structured literature review (SLR) adopted an appropriate procedure for searching, screening, and selection of journal articles from Scopus and Google Scholar databases to arrive at a final sample. Findings from the study observed that public sector IC research remains limited and geographically concentrated in Europe and Asia, with a notable absence in Africa. Additionally, existing public sector IC studies focus predominantly on performance measurement and disclosure/reporting/practices issues, with less attention to other issues. Stakeholder, resource-based, and legitimacy theories mostly dominate the field, while alternative theoretical perspectives remain underutilized. Methodologically, quantitative approaches prevail, with limited use of qualitative and mixed methods. However, prior literature has largely relied on content analysis for qualitative research and regression analysis for quantitative research. Nonetheless, the authors discovered that education/research sector is protuberant in comparison with other sectors. This study contributes to the literature by offering a theory-integrated and critically synthesized review of IC antecedents in the public sector, introducing a sectoral (financial and non-financial) classification and identifying underexplored theoretical and methodological pathways.