Archives quotidiennes :

Conceptualizing Intangible Assetization. Entangled Processes and Controversies in a Public Context

Laure Célérier, Eve Chiapello & Anne Jeny (2025)

This is a preprint article, it offers immediate access but has not been peer reviewed.

Abstract. The article proposes a conceptual framework to account for initiatives aimed at identifying and managing intangible assets. In contrast to recent work proposing a narrow definition of assetization rooted in a financial definition of assets, we highlight the variety of forms of assetization. We conceptualize intangible assetization as a process of transforming things into intangible assets. Intangible assetization requires some work and we construct four types of operations: the identification of what can be an intangible asset, the managization (the introduction of some management) of the identified assets, their commercialization (the search for ways of generating revenue from them), and finally their balance-sheetization (their inclusion in the balance sheet). Each of these is a trial of explicitness (Muniesa & Linhardt, 2011) that is enacting notably a certain conception of the accounting entity. This conceptual framework enables us to analyze an initiative by the French government, which in 2007 set up an in-house consultancy agency to promote the management of public intangible assets. Our analysis is based on 42 interviews and a collection of documents, from the inception in 2006, to 2021