Mediating role of board of directors' functions between intellectual capital components and overall firm performance in Iranian high IC firms

The main purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationships among Intellectual Capital (IC) factors, Board of Directors’ Functions (BoDF) and Overall Firm Performance (OFP). Moreover, the role of BoDF as a mediator in the development of OFP (includes non-financial and financial performance) as the dependent variable also was investigated. In this study, six research questions and twelve hypotheses were surveyed. The population of this study was top management. A questionnaire containing 84 questions with a likert-type scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) was used as the vital instrument in gathering data and a total of 314 respondents were involved in the survey. This study utilized the survey method to describe IC components, BoDF factors which are the determinants for OFP and propose that all these factors would contribute to better performance in practice. The collected data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and inferential analysis through the SEM and SPSS. As an analytical method, structural equation modeling was selected using AMOS 20.0 version. The outcomes of this study recognized the mediating role of board of directors functions in the relationship between IC factors [including of Human Capital (HC), Structural Capital (SC), Relational Capital (RC) and Spiritual Capital (SpC)] and OFP. However, the results of the SEM analysis also exposed that “board of directors functions” do not have a significant role between SpC and OFP. The results also showed that RC and SC, respectively have directly the highest contribution toward the prediction of BoDF and OFP, while HC and SpC were the second and third predictors, respectively. From an academic point of view, the results of this study, especially its mediating relationship helps scholars understand the processes further which might be supportive in discovering further mediator at different levels of analysis