Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore several contingency variables, namely environmental uncertainty, business strategy, technological advancement, market to book ratio, size, profitability and industry type in the context of management accounting and the availability of internal intellectual capital (IC) information.

Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was developed and posted to the managers of Malaysian companies. A multiple regression statistical technique was employed to analyse the data.

Findings – It is found that business strategy and technological advancement of customer service relate positively to the availability of internal IC information in Malaysian companies.

Research limitations/implications – The relatively small response of usable replies to the questionnaire survey is a limitation of this paper. The finding implies that companies with more internal IC information are more likely to be those of product differentiators and those who have undergone technological advancement of customer service. Malaysian companies tend to have a strong customer orientation and place great emphasis on managing customer capital (CC). Future research can investigate the types of IC information used by Malaysian managers to manage their CC.

Originality/value – This paper contributes to the literature as it examines the relationship between context and IC within a contingency theory framework. Unlike other research which relates to external IC disclosures with firm-specific variables, this research links contingency factors to internal IC information from related fields (management accounting and external IC reporting).