The Role of Intellectual Capital in the Healthcare Sector: The Case of the Local Health Units of Rome

Healthcare Organizations can be identified as contexts that can be defined as highly “knowledge-intensive”, both because of the peculiar characteristics of the personnel working in them, who are highly specialized, and because of the quality of the services provided. When we talk about Intellectual Capital within the Public Administration, the health sector proves to be among the least investigated, with the consequent lack of a reference model for the presentation of variables and a clear awareness of the criticalities found in the representation of this concept in such complex organizations. For this reason, the following research focuses on the content analysis of the Corporate Acts of the six Roman Local Health Units (ASLs) to analyze the impact of Intellectual Capital on Organization performance, specifically by resorting to key indicators identified concerning the three dimensions of Intellectual Capital (relational-individual-internal). The study aims to propose insights on IC for all public settings, both health and non-health, to integrate better the Intellectual Capital employed and help stakeholders understand the topic better.