Does intellectual capital promote the shift of healthcare organizations towards sustainable development? Evidence from Italy

Scholars recently urged for research able to unlock the link between sustainable development (SD) strategy and intellectual capital (IC) at the organization level. In line with this call, the present paper aims at investigating strategic planning for sustainability within healthcare organizations (HCOs), and the role that IC plays in SD. Indeed, this latter has been claimed to be a potential enabler of Italian HCOs’ shift towards SD which is a major challenge posed by international institutions. Focusing on IC assets that emerged from the institutional context, the authors designed a model of “Sustainable Intellectual Capital for HCOs” and conducted a survey of a sample of General Directors (GDs) of Italian hospitals. The aim was to determine: whether GDs were adopting formalized SD strategies, the kind of organizational positions that managed sustainability issues, the sustainability projects/actions adopted, and the effect of IC in incentivizing those initiatives. The results showed that the majority of GDs had adopted a formalized sustainability plan in which informal and/or occasional structures or collegial bodies dealt with sustainability. Finally, a stochastic ordering test showed an alignment between the GDs who attributed higher relevance to information and communication technologies and advanced technologies for sustainability and the adoption of formal sustainability strategy. Further research should deepen the role of connectivity among different assets for SD. The developed model of sustainable IC for HCOs can support healthcare managers to test the contribution of IC assets to sustainability.