With the coming of the knowledge economy era, non-financial indicators are often the real measures of corporate competency. Intellectual capital is one of the non-financial indicators that can not be shown in the financial report. As intangible assets showing high degree of uncertainty regarding to future benefit or being unmeasurable, how to use intellectual capital for measuring corporate performance and corporate value has become an important research topic. In this study, intellectual capital defined as human capital, structural capital and relational capital is used as independent variable; whereas corporate value is taken as dependent variable and corporate performance is mediating variable. The research purpose is to explore the causal relationship among the variables and the mediating effect of corporate performance empirically. The research results indicate that: (a) intellectual capital including human capital, structural capital and relational capital shows significantly positive exploratory power to corporate performance and corporate value; (b) The effect of corporate performance to corporate value is also significantly positive associated; (c) corporate performance shows mediating effect on the relationship between intellectual capital and corporate value. Contributions and limitations are discussed, and suggestions are provided for future studies and managerial practices in Chinese organizations.
