Nicoleta Maria Ienciu and Dumitru Matiș
This chapter expands the existing literature by examining voluntary intellectual capital disclosure provided by listed Romanian companies in 2010 annual reports.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter expands the existing literature by examining voluntary intellectual capital disclosure provided by listed Romanian companies in 2010 annual reports.
Design/methodology/approach
The chapter aims to determine the extent of intellectual capital disclosure within Romanian listed companies. Within this chapter we have conducted a content analysis using the annual reports of 71 companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE), main market (Bursa de Valori Bucure_ti – BVB). The intellectual capital framework developed by Sveiby in 1997 was used in our analysis and the frequency of disclosure was used as the measure of disclosure.
Findings
The results show that the key components of intellectual capital are relatively poorly reported by Romanian listed companies. The main areas of intellectual capital disclosure focus firstly on structural capital, then on relational capital and at the end on human capital.
Research limitations/implications
The existence of information related to intellectual capital is used as the measure of the level of intellectual capital disclosure. Also, our exploratory investigation concerns only one fiscal year.
Originality/value
According to the authors’ knowledge the present chapter is a pioneering study developed at national level which highlights the intellectual capital disclosure practices of Romanian listed companies by examining their 2010 annual reports. The chapter highlights new insights of the level of intellectual capital disclosure within companies which operates in small capital market.
Details
Keywords
The main purpose of this chapter is to investigate the association between intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) level and two potential explanatory determinants: industry type…
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of this chapter is to investigate the association between intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) level and two potential explanatory determinants: industry type and company size.
Design/methodology/approach
Twenty-one annual reports of Romanian public companies represented the sample companies. For each company, an ICD index was constructed based on an intellectual capital (IC) framework composed of 33 IC items. The results obtained for ICD Index are then used for statistical testing: descriptive statistics, T test, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis.
Findings
Industry type by its own does not seem to influence ICD level and company size by its own does not influence the IC disclosure. However, the combination of the two variables significantly combines together to predict ICD.
Research limitations/implications
A specified list of IC items may not provide the whole picture of ICD practices. Future research could consider interviewing managers about their disclosure rationale. A larger sample could help to further improve the extrapolation of the results. Furthermore, this study challenges researchers to extend the area of analysis by considering the relation between ICD and other possible determinants. Last but not least, a longitudinal study could provide more insights.
Practical implications
The results obtained represent a basis for comparison with those obtained by other studies carried out in other developing countries. Furthermore, they can be used in meta-analysis.
Originality/value
This chapter is one of the first investigating ICD in the case of Romanian companies. Accordingly, our chapter contributes to the ICD literature by providing new empirical evidence on the determinants of ICD in a developing country context.
Details
Keywords
Foong Soon Yau, Loo Sin Chun and Rajeswary Balaraman
This study examines the extent and nature of voluntary intellectual capital (IC) disclosure by public‐listed companies in Malaysia and how the disclosure may be explained by the…
Abstract
This study examines the extent and nature of voluntary intellectual capital (IC) disclosure by public‐listed companies in Malaysia and how the disclosure may be explained by the economics or other rationale of corporate disclosure. Those intangible assets that are required to be disclosed under the extant accounting standards were specifically excluded from this study. The top 30 and the bottom 30 companies were selected from the list of top 100 largest public‐listed companies by market capitalization at the end of 2003. Content analysis was used to measure the extent of voluntary IC disclosure in the 2003 annual reports of the selected companies. This study found that the voluntary disclosure of IC information is generally not extensive among the publiclisted companies in Malaysia and narrative description of their IC attributes is the most often adopted format. The findings suggest that the IC disclosure behaviour of the sample companies may be explained based on both economic and non‐economic rationale. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Details
Keywords
Intellectual capital (IC) is believed to be more important resources to add the value of a company rather than physical assets. This gives rise to the increasing practice of…
Abstract
Intellectual capital (IC) is believed to be more important resources to add the value of a company rather than physical assets. This gives rise to the increasing practice of reporting IC information in corporate annual report. Over the past fifteen years, considerable numbers of studies have employed content analysis to examine the extent and nature of IC information in several countries, but they presented different results. These results might partly contribute to different methods in counting information. In fact, the previous studies have been critised for not explicitly clarifying how information was recoded and counted which led to incomparable findings. Therefore, this paper firstly seeks to discuss an illustrative example of ‘sense-making‘ process in identifying, categorizing, and counting of IC information in annual reports of pilot sample company. Secondly, the method refined in the pilot study was applied over the final samples of six large companies in the UK from 1974 to 2008 The contribution of this paper is to primarily refine the previous method in recoding information, to send a message that transparency is crucial in content analysis and to facilitate method replication for future studies. Overall, this study demonstrates a marked increase in IC information disclosure was identified over the 35 years. The relational capital information disclosure was relatively more prominent over time, followed by human capital and structural capital.
Valentina Beretta, Maria Chiara Demartini and Sara Trucco
Voluntary non-financial reporting aims at fairly reporting a firm’s non-financial performance. In particular, integrated reporting (IR) displays in a single report the…
Abstract
Voluntary non-financial reporting aims at fairly reporting a firm’s non-financial performance. In particular, integrated reporting (IR) displays in a single report the contribution of different forms of capital to the firm’s value creation. Drawing on both legitimacy and voluntary disclosure theory, the main purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance affects the content and semantic properties of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) found in IRs.
To test theoretical hypotheses, content and tone analysis is used to assess the disclosure strategy associated with ICD, whereas a regression analysis tests the variation in semantic properties of ICD according to firms’ ESG performance. A total of 79 reports by European listed firms from 2011 to 2016 were downloaded via the Integrated Reporting Emerging Practice Examples Database and analyzed.
Results show that ESG performance contributing more to optimistic ICD tone is governance, although in mixed ways. Integrating vision and strategy positively contributes to ICD tone, whereas information on poor treatment of shareholders’ rights tends to be manipulated and associated with an optimistic tone of the ICD. Moreover, eco-efficient product innovation and healthy and safe job conditions play a positive role in enhancing optimistic ICD tone.
This chapter contributes to the current literature on voluntary disclosure by introducing new evidence on the disclosure strategy in IR. By analyzing the effect of the single dimensions of ESG performance on ICD tone, this study extends respectively ESG literature.
Details
Keywords
J. Guthrie, R. Petty, K. Yongvanich and F. Ricceri
Increasingly, researchers in the field of intellectual capital (IC) need to be able to justify the specific research methods they use to collect the empirical data that they…
Abstract
Increasingly, researchers in the field of intellectual capital (IC) need to be able to justify the specific research methods they use to collect the empirical data that they examine to support and test opinions regarding the merit of different approaches to managing and reporting IC. Of the various methods available to researchers seeking to understand intellectual capital reporting (ICR), content analysis is the most popular. The aim of this paper is to review the use of content analysis as a research method in understanding ICR and to offer some observations on the practical utility of the method. Further, the paper examines several research method issues relating to the use of content analysis that have been discussed in the social environmental accounting literature, but not as yet in the IC literature, which we believe are relevant to investigations underway in the field of ICR. This paper reports on several developmental issues we have confronted when using content analysis to examine the voluntary disclosure of IC in annual reports by various organisations. The paper also suggests two theoretical foundations for further investigation into the voluntary disclosure of IC by organisations, and suggests why content analysis is well matched to both these theories as a means to collect empirical data to test research propositions.
Details
Keywords
James Guthrie, Peter Steane and Federica Farneti
The paper aims to study and compare the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) annual (AR) and intellectual capital reports (ICR) with an earlier study. The paper seeks to…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to study and compare the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) annual (AR) and intellectual capital reports (ICR) with an earlier study. The paper seeks to analyse the reporting practices of intellectual capital (IC) within this organisation.
Design/methodology/approach
The case study organisation is an Australian not‐for‐profit (NFP) organisation and the study took place over three years. A content analysis of ARCBS AR and ICR between 2002 and 2005 was conducted. Several interviews were conducted with a number of key ARBCS staff during 2006 to identify why and how they reported IC information.
Findings
The findings indicate a greater focus on internal and external capital with less focus on human capital. The frequency with which certain internal, external and human capital elements occur in ARCBS reports can be explained by macro, meso and micro factors which affect the organisation and influence the information it provides to its stakeholders. It was found that the AR addressed the concerns of multiple stakeholder groups, whereas the ICR are more targeted towards specific audiences.
Originality/value
This paper examines ICR and IC frameworks in the context of the NFP sector. Few prior studies consider this sector.
Details
Keywords
Laurence Lock Lee and James Guthrie
The purpose of this paper is to describe a research method successfully used to study intellectual capital (IC) and IC flows through a highly networked marketplace.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe a research method successfully used to study intellectual capital (IC) and IC flows through a highly networked marketplace.
Design/methodology/approach
The method integrates computer‐assisted content analysis (CA) and multivariate statistics. The CA is performed on a large source of business and analyst reports. The method is successful in enabling the elements of IC to be related to firm performance, using 156 firms in the global information technology market as a testing ground.
Findings
Computer‐assisted CA techniques could be successfully used to analyse the larger samples of firms for IC attributes like human capital, internal capital and external or relational capital, than have previously been feasible using manual CA methods.
Research limitations/implications
Several limitations of the method are identified and relate to the computer‐assisted CA method used. First, the method relies on the existence of a large body of content, in this case business reports and articles, to create the indices for the IC attributes. A second limitation is that the IC attributes are constructed from public sources (i.e. they represent the view of external reporters, rather than internal to the organisation reporters). The method presented combines and extends the benefits of both qualitative and quantitative methods. The richer source of IC content for a larger sample of firms is made accessible through computer‐assisted CA. The overall method enables insights to be explored in relating firm IC to firm performance in the market place.
Originality/value
The integrated research method presented is the result of original research. The value to researchers is the opportunity it provides to study the IC/performance relationship across markets, rather than be limited to small sample or limited attribute studies.
Details
Keywords
Lino Cinquini, Emilio Passetti, Andrea Tenucci and Marco Frey
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the content, frequency and quality of intellectual capital voluntary disclosure (ICVD) and the changes that took place over two years…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the content, frequency and quality of intellectual capital voluntary disclosure (ICVD) and the changes that took place over two years (2005 and 2006) in a sample of 37 sustainability reports published by Italian listed companies.
Design/methodology/approach
The intellectual capital framework consists of three levels: “IC categories”, “IC items” and “IC indicators”, while content analysis was performed using a quality multidimensional scheme composed of three disclosure profiles, namely, time orientation, nature of information and type of information.
Findings
The findings evidence a high and increasing incidence over time of ICVD, with strong emphasis on human capital disclosure, which represents the most reported category, followed by relational and organisational capital. ICVD is mainly expressed in non‐financial, quantitative and non‐time‐specific terms with a low level of forward‐looking information.
Research limitations/implications
This study is based on a small sample of sustainability reports; the content analysis process entails some subjective judgments.
Practical implications
From a firm perspective, sustainability reports can be used in synergy with annual reports and other public and private documents to provide IC information. From a user perspective, sustainability reports can be used to acquire IC information over and above information acquired from other documents.
Originality/value
Sustainability reports and ICVD quality have thus far been investigated only to a limited extent. The paper also discusses the potential of ICVD in sustainability reports from a user perspective.