Studying the Relationship between Intellectual Capital and Competitive Advantage: An Adaptive Study on Public and Private Banks

This study aims to investigate the relationship between intellectual capital and competitive advantage in public and private banks of Khouzestan province, Iran. Six hypotheses were designed to examine the relationship between these two variables. A questionnaire with 32 questions was designed to test those hypotheses. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was seen to be at acceptable level for latent variables. Then the questionnaire was distributed to 333 employees of four public and three private banks. The forms were gathered afterwards and hypotheses and relationships between variables were examined using structural equation model and LISREL software. Results showed that all hypotheses and proposed relationships between variables are significant amongst public and private banks. The status of intellectual capital components (human, client and structural) and competitive advantage in private banks was at a more desirable level relative to public banks. Amongst the components of intellectual capital, human capital in private banks and client capital in public banks were more strongly related to competitive advantage. Ultimately, a number of propositions are made in order to strengthen the components of intellectual capital in public and private banks.