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This study is motivated by the rising regulatory demand for new digital solutions enabling searchable and comparable sustainability corporate information. It aims at uncovering the antecedents of the technological major benefits highlighted by the ongoing scientific debate on the digitalization processes implemented by firms. Therefore, this paper focuses on the factors related to the emergence of digital accounting, reporting and disclosure of sustainability corporate information.

Following the Technology-Organization-Environment framework, the authors review and classify the factors identified by current academic literature that may enable or constraint the use of digital solutions for collecting, reporting and disclosing corporate non-financial information. A total of 86 sources were retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science and reviewed following a systematic approach.

Results show an increasing interest in the digitalization of corporate sustainability accounting and reporting and highlight some related drivers with a predominance of technological and environmental enablers (e.g. compatibility, stakeholders pressure) along with organizational constraints (e.g. need for technical and training programmes) influencing the ongoing adoption of new technologies for both internal and inter-organizational purposes.

The authors provide several research directions for enhancing the academic interest in corporate accounting digitalization.

This paper offers practical contributions to regulators and companies concerning the challenges they should face in applying new technologies for non-financial reporting purposes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic literature review on the enablers and constraints of digitalization of sustainability accounting, reporting and disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential for eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to go beyond static reporting. A taxonomy structure of information is developed for providing a knowledge base and insights for an XBRL taxonomy for integrated reporting (IR).

Design Science (DS) research, as a pragmatic exploratory research approach, is embraced to create a new “artefact” and thematic content analysis is used to analyse IR in practice.

Using XBRL for IR allows a shift from static and periodic reporting to more relevant and dynamic corporate disclosure for stakeholders, who can navigate and retrieve customised disclosure information according to their interest by exploiting the multidimensionality of IR and overcome some of its criticisms. The bi-dimensional taxonomy structure the authors’ present allows users to navigate disclosure from two different perspectives (content elements (CE) and capitals), display specific themes of interest, and drill down to more detailed information. Because of its evidence-based nature and levels of disaggregation, it provides flexibility to preparers and users of information. Additionally, the findings demonstrate the need to codify sector-specific information for the CE, so that to direct the efforts toward the development of sector-specific taxonomy extensions in developing an XBRL taxonomy for IR.

The limitations of DS research are, first, the artefact design and, second, its effects in practice. The first limitation stems from the social actors’ perspective taken into account to develop the taxonomy structure, which derives from the analysis of the reporting practices rather than a pluralistic approach and dialogic engagement. The second limitation relates to the XBRL taxonomy development process because, since the study is limited to the “design” phase being codification and structuring the knowledge base for an XBRL taxonomy, there is a need to develop a taxonomy in XBRL and then apply it in practice to empirically demonstrate the potential and benefits of XBRL in the IR context.

The taxonomy structure is targeted at entities interested in designing an XBRL taxonomy for IR. This is a call for academics and practitioners to explore the potential of technology to improve corporate disclosure and open up new projections for resurging themes on intellectual capital (IC) reporting with prospects for IC “fourth-stage” research focused on IC disclosure.

This is an interdisciplinary research employing the DS approach, which is rooted in information systems research. It is the first academic study providing pragmatic results for using XBRL in the context of IC and IR.

This paper aims to investigate how firms disclose the presentation and content of business model (BM) information in corporate reports to manage their legitimacy in response to European Directive 2014/95.

Legitimacy theory is used to identify disclosure strategies pursued by firms in reaction to the new regulation. To understand how firms adopt these strategic responses, semiotic analysis is applied to a sample of European companies’ reports through Crowther’s (2012) framework, which is based on a mechanism of binary oppositions.

Half of the sample strategically choose to comply with the European Union (EU) Directive regarding BM information through the use of non-accounting language, figures, and diagrams. Other firms did not disclose any substantive information but managed the impression of compliance with the regulation, while the remainder of the sample dismissed the regulation altogether.

This study demonstrates how organisations use the disclosure of BM information in their corporate reports to control their legitimacy. The results support the idea that firms can acquire legitimacy by complying with the law or giving the impression of compliance with the regulation. This study provides evidence on the first-time adoption of the EU Directive, and therefore, future research can enlarge the sample and conduct the analysis over a broader time frame.

A more precise indication of the EU Directive regarding “where” firms should report BM information, “how” the description of a BM should refer to the environmental, social, governance (ESG) factors, and a set of performance measures to track the evolution of a company’s BM overtime is needed.

While there has been a notable amount of research that has applied content analysis methodologies to investigate the thematic and syntactic aspects of BM disclosure in corporate reports, only a few studies have investigated BM disclosures in relation to the EU Directive. Furthermore, the application of semiotic analysis extends beyond traditional content analysis methodologies because it considers the structure of the story at many levels, thus developing a more complete textual picture of how BMs are described, allowing an analysis of the reasons behind the disclosure strategies pursued by firms.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of recent developments in corporate reporting, specifically from the carbon disclosure project (CDP) environment, in the evolution of European post-crisis financial markets.

Theoretical and instrumental advancements from nonlinear dynamics have been applied to the analysis of market behaviour and the online presence or reputation of major European listed banks.

The application of a nonlinear statistical methodology (i.e. the autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average [ARFIMA] estimation model) demonstrates the presence of a long history of collected data, thus indicating a certain degree of predictability in the time series. Also, this study confirms the existence of structural breakpoints, specifically the impact of the CDP reporting in both stock prices and online search trends of the sampled companies for certain periods.

This study introduces new methodological perspectives in corporate reporting studies, as the application of nonlinear techniques can be more effective in capturing corporate transparency issues. A limitation to overcome is to explore whether the impact of reporting is different due to the specific reporting behaviour each company adopts.

The “breakpoint” concept should enlighten the importance to firms of providing more information in specific moments, which can impact on both traditional (i.e. stock prices) and modern (i.e. online popularity) performance metrics. Additionally, it should be taken into account by stakeholders, when analysing the accountability of firms to improve their decision-making processes and policymakers, for monitoring and contrasting speculative and insider trading activities.

Online search trends represent a new public attitude to how society “measures” the effectiveness of firms’ disclosure behaviours.

Combining ARFIMA with structural break techniques can be regarded as a relevant and complementary addition to classic “market reaction” or “value relevance” techniques.