Overview of the Effect of Dimensions of Intellectual Capital and Employee Satisfaction Based on Internal Marketing on Competitive Advantage

Since human resources turned to be one of the most important organizational assets, building a sense of job satisfaction is critical in the employees. The more job satisfaction increases in the employees, the more commitment and accountability increase in them. Since manpower turned to be one of the most precious resources within an organization, job satisfaction leads to increasing productivity within the organization so far as a distinctive competitive advantage develops within the organization, resulting in profitability, survival, and continuous development of the organization, which are deemed the ultimate aim of any organization. The present research aims to examine the effect of dimensions of intellectual capital and employee satisfaction based on internal marketing on competitive advantage within import-export companies in Port of Bushehr. In this regard, 99 questionnaires were distributed among the managers and employees within import-export companies in Port of Bushehr, for which PLS software was used to analyze data in the questionnaires. Findings indicated that there is a positive significant relationship between competitive advantage and "human capital and customer capital", yet the structural capital of the intellectual capital has no effect on the competitive advantage. Further, all the dimensions of internal marketing, including training and development of employees, reward system, and internal communications, had a positive significant effect on job satisfaction. Ultimately, a positive significant relationship was found between job satisfaction and competitive advantage.