Can the CEO Improves Intellectual Capital?

Intellectual capital is largely examined in association with the larger corporate governance structure. There is practically no empirical work on the relationship with the CEO. Meanwhile, it is the CEO that has the onerous task of utilizing the intellectual capital assets available to the organization from its employees. In view of this deficiency, this study examines the influence of the CEO in improving the intellectual capital assets of the firm. In this research, CEO is proxied by CEO duality, nationality, gender, tenure, turnover, and share ownership; while, intellectual capital is measured by value-added intellectual capital score. The data set is collected from the annual reports and accounts of the firms and analysed by the use of descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis after regression diagnostics. The findings suggest that CEO has significant influence on intellectual. The study, therefore, concludes that CEO attributes are determinants of intellectual capital of non-financial services firms in Nigeria. These findings are however, limited to listed non-financial services firms and the control variables used. Also, the relationship between CEO and intellectual is established by this study, how to carry out the needed improvements requires further investigation.