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The sport industry, due to the great importance of intangible assets, represents a field of particular interest for the analysis of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD). However, this sector is still underexplored in the academic literature. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the level of intellectual capital (IC) information disclosed by the most important basketball clubs on their website and the factors capable of influencing the dissemination of such information. Specifically, it examines the impact of social media visibility – in terms of number of social networks, number of posts, number of followers and internet visibility – on the ICD level.

Firstly, this study performs a manual content analysis of the websites of the top 80 European and US basketball clubs aimed at analysing the ICD level. Secondly, it provides for a regression analysis to test the impact of social media visibility on the amount of IC information disclosed.

Empirical results show a low level of ICD among the basketball clubs examined. They also demonstrate the positive impact of number of posts, number of followers and internet visibility on the amount of IC information disclosed online.

This study extends the analysis of the ICD to the sport industry, still little examined by the academic literature. In this regards, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the ICD in the basketball industry.

Human capital (HC) represents a particularly important element capable of guiding the firms’ value creation process in the new economy. The purpose of this study is to analyze the level of HC information contained within integrated reports and to identify the variables that influence the HC disclosure policies of companies.

Research hypotheses, developed on the basis of agency theory, were tested using a regression model on a sample of 137 worldwide companies. A HC disclosure index was designed to examine the level of HC disclosure and a content analysis was used to investigate the integrated reports.

Results showed a positive and significant impact of firm size, board size, board independence and board diversity on the level of HC information disclosed by companies within their integrated reports. On the contrary, they demonstrated a not significant effect of firm profitability.

Results have important implications for corporate executives, high-level corporate governance, policymakers and investors. They point out additional further motivations for creating larger boards and including non-executive members and women on the board. In addition, investors could use the HC disclosure index to evaluate companies’ HC disclosure policies in their investment decisions.

This study extends the agency theory application scope and extends the analysis of HC disclosure to other corporate documents, namely, integrated reports. Besides, it increases knowledge about the factors capable of influencing HC disclosure, identifying a series of elements capable of directly affecting the level of information that companies disclose.

Under the lens of stakeholder theory, this study aims to explore the dissemination of intellectual capital (IC) information within the healthcare sector. Specifically, the primary objective is to investigate the extent of IC disclosure (ICD) among leading global hospitals and its underlying determinants.

This study conducts a manual content analysis of the official websites of 175 leading global hospitals, selected based on The World’s Best Hospitals 2022, and uses a linear regression model to test the research hypotheses.

The empirical results underscore an adequate dissemination of IC information by leading global hospitals through their official websites. Moreover, they reveal a positive association between hospital complexity, public status, and online visibility with the extent of IC information disclosed.

This study represents a pioneering contribution to the examination of determinants influencing online ICD within a global hospital context. It significantly enhances the existing literature on ICD and offers valuable practical implications.

This study, based on stakeholder theory, aims to analyse the factors that can affect the level of visual disclosure in the context of integrated reporting (IR), which represents the last frontier of corporate disclosure.

This study develops an innovative measure to measure the level of visual disclosure of integrated reports that takes into account the use and degree of integration of images and graphs. Furthermore, to test the hypotheses, this study uses a regression model on a sample of 134 international companies that published an integrated report in 2018.

The results show that firm size, firm profitability and industry environmental sensitivity positively affect the level of visual disclosure of the integrated reports.

To our knowledge, this is the first study that examines visual disclosure in the IR context. It also extends the field of application of the stakeholder theory, still little used to explain visual disclosure strategies, and increases knowledge on the determinants of IR.

This study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance attributes, in the form of board characteristics, on risk disclosures provided through integrated reporting (IR).

Drawing upon an agency theory perspective, this study examines the effect of the main corporate governance board characteristics (size, gender diversity, independence and meeting frequency) on the level of risk disclosure provided by a sample of 95 IR adopters from 24 countries for 2018.

The results suggest that firms are slow to realise IR’s potential to produce innovations in risk disclosure mechanisms. In addition, certain board characteristics, such as gender diversity, independence of directors and meeting frequency, are positive drivers of the risk disclosure provided via IR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure provided via IR. Connecting corporate governance mechanisms to IR risk disclosure practices can contribute to enhancing the practical and theoretical understanding of the role that the board of directors may play in stimulating transparency and accountability about risks via an alternative communication tool, IR, to the benefit of both investors and other stakeholders.

Accountability and transparency represent two concepts that are gaining more and more importance in the higher education systems. Universities are increasingly called upon to provide both financial and non-financial information. This circumstance has attracted the interest of academics interested in examining the transparency levels of universities. However, limited attention has been paid to corporate governance disclosure. This study aims to bridge this important gap by analyzing the amount of corporate governance information disseminated by Italian universities through their website and the factors capable of influencing this level of disclosure.

This study uses manual content analysis on a sample of 92 Italian universities to measure the extent of corporate governance information dissemination. In addition, it uses various regression models to test the research hypotheses.

Empirical results demonstrate, first, an adequate commitment to online corporate governance disclosure and, second, a greater propensity toward the dissemination of corporate governance information by the largest and public universities.

The findings greatly enrich the academic literature and have important practical implications for universities, policymakers, and lawmakers.

This study aims to investigate the financial and country-level determinants of integrated reporting quality in the financial industry. Specifically, this study analyses the impact of profitability, size, leverage and civil law system on the integrated reporting quality.

Hypotheses were tested using a regression model on a sample of 87 financial institutions. An integrated reporting (IR)-quality scoreboard was used to measure report quality.

The results show that IR quality is significantly and positively influenced by profitability, size, financial leverage and the civil law system.

The results have particularly important implications for large, profitable financial institutions that make greater use of financial leverage and that are localized in non-civil law countries. Managers should increase transparency by expanding the content and quality of the information contained in the integrated reports.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing several financial factors that influence IR quality. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate IR quality in the context of the financial industry.

Although there is a growing body of literature on circular economy disclosure (CED), certain sectors, including the airline industry, remain underexplored despite the particular relevance of circular models in this field. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the dissemination of circular economy (CE) information by airlines through their website and investigating the factors influencing the level of CED. Specifically, this study focuses on the characteristics of the board of directors, given its central role in shaping disclosure practices.

This study employs manual content analysis to measure the extent of CE information disclosed by 105 international airlines through their website. It then conducts a regression analysis to examine the influence of board characteristics on the level of online CED.

The results suggest that airlines with larger, more active and more independent boards of directors tend to be more inclined to disseminate CE information through their website. Furthermore, they demonstrate that board gender diversity does not significantly affect the extent of CE information disseminated.

The study offers valuable contributions by extending CED research to the airline industry and exploring new channels for CE information dissemination. Additionally, it highlights the role of the board of directors in shaping CED practices and confirms the effectiveness of the stakeholder-agency theory in explaining this relationship.

This study aims to add empirical evidence to the intellectual capital (IC) literature by enhancing understanding of voluntary online IC disclosure (ICD) practices in knowledge-based institutions such as universities from an international standpoint. The ultimate purpose of this study is to examine how different variables related to size, internet visibility and certain corporate governance attributes (i.e. board size and board gender diversity) affect the extent to which universities from different world’s countries convey ICD through websites.

This study investigates a sample of 100 international universities selected according to the QS World University Rankings 2020 to examine the level of ICD provided through their official websites. It uses a content analysis to measure the actual amount of IC information disclosed by these universities and a regression model to test the impact of the explanatory variables.

Empirical results demonstrate a negative impact of the board size and a positive effect of board gender diversity and internet visibility on the level of IC information disclosed by international universities on their website. They also demonstrate a non-significant effect of university size.

This study contributes to enriching the academic literature in different ways. In the first place, it extends the field of application of the stakeholder theory. In the second place, this study sheds light on the actual ICD level of international universities. In the third place, it examines the ICD through a channel – websites – which are still little explored by the academic literature. Finally, this study increases knowledge about the factors that can influence the ICD disclosure of international universities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how Information technology (IT) controls influence the control environment’s components and the internal control system.

This paper aims to highlight how IT controls enable to improve the control environment assessment and implementation.

The analysis indicates that the implementation of the IT controls (IT organizational controls, IT process controls and IT soft variables controls) provides some indications for managers and auditors, who must implement or assess internal control system. A joint use of the three dimensions of IT control contributes to a better assessment of the individual components of the control environment. IT controls help managers to develop the design of the organizational structure and to identify the key processes to achieve the internal control objectives and to mitigate firm’s risk.

The examination of three IT control dimensions allows managers to expand their knowledge about these types of controls and change the way they approach technology-based processes and associated risks. This improves the understanding of the key aspects connected to the control environment. The paper provides a list of the relevant activities that affect the three types of IT controls. This is useful for managers to begin to frame the specific controls inside the three dimensions of IT control.

This paper addresses an area of relevance to both practitioners and academics. This analysis focuses on accounting information systems themes and, through the examination of the IT controls, allows a better understanding of the hard and soft elements of the control environment.