Measurement, Management and Reporting of Intangible Assets:A Review

Changing business environment demands an urgent shift of focus from the tangible assets to the intangible assets. The present paper attempts to explore and analyse the major issues related to the importance of intangibles, approaches to measure intangible assets, relationship between intangibles and firm performance, and trend of disclosures related to intangibles. Intangible assets have created a new research domain. Intangibles continue to be a complex research domain. Problems associated with the domain start right from identification and definition of intangibles. Difficulties in the identification stage are passed on to measurement and reporting. The organisations are spending a huge amount of money on acquiring and creating Intangible Assets. For sustained investments, the impact of intangible assets on firm performance needs to be ascertained. With increased awareness and recognitions of these assets the future challenge will move from merely "identifying and reporting" to "nurturing and exploiting" these assets. There is a dire need for research insights on organisational level management of intangibles.