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The purpose of this paper is to open a debate on the interrelationship between categorisation, labelling, disclosure and enforcement. The extant literature on the accounting reporting environment explores the provision of both mandated and voluntary disclosures. Often disclosure is defined in a less than rigorous manner, mislabelled, misclassified and uses a strict dichotomy that limits information fineness.

The authors advance a non-dichotomous continuum of disclosure from voluntary and innovative at one end of the spectrum, to mandatory at the other, that helps reduce mislabelling and miscategorisation.

Firms’ voluntary disclosures cannot be properly interpreted without reviewing their interrelationship with mandatory disclosures and vice versa. Definitions of voluntary disclosure that have been used in empirical studies are examined, including the mislabelling and misclassification of voluntary disclosures and the authors provide examples of truly voluntary and innovative disclosures by companies.

This paper constructs, and provides evidence consistent with, a reporting continuum rather than the dichotomous disclosure measure that dominates decades of prior literature.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of voluntary non-financial reporting on the evaluation of audit risk from the auditors’ viewpoint in a post-crisis period. Furthermore, this paper analyses whether auditors perceive that voluntary non-financial reporting impacts audit risk differently for old clients as compared with new clients.

This study is conducted on a sample of Italian audit firms through a paper-based questionnaire. Both Big4 and non-Big4 audit firms have been included in the sample.

Results show that integrated reporting is perceived to be the most relevant reporting method and intellectual capital statement the least relevant. Surprisingly, empirical findings over the sample period show that auditors do not perceive statistically significant differences between old and new clients.

Auditors can identify opportunities to adapt their assessment model to include voluntary non-financial report information. Moreover, they can use different assessment models regarding the research variables in the case of new and old clients.

Empirical findings highlight the growing role of voluntary non-financial reporting in the auditors’ perception of their client’s audit risk. All the observed voluntary non-financial reporting forms, except for intellectual capital, are considered as relevant by auditors in the evaluation of their client’s audit risk when compared to an indifference point. In addition, findings reveal that female auditors perceive a reduced gap in the relevance between integrated reports and intellectual capital reports compared to their counterparts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between market structure, competition and pricing in the UK accounting services market. This association is important because mergers amongst the leading firms and the collapse of Arthur Andersen have reduced the number of international accounting firms to four.

The paper examines concentration ratios (CR) and the fees charged by accounting firms. The data used encompass the period when the number of leading suppliers fell from eight to four.

FTSE100 consultancy fees increased rapidly in the 1990s. Independence concerns, corporate scandals and additional legislation contributed to a sharp increase in audit fees and a significant decrease in consultancy fees since the turn of the century. The international accounting firms responded to saturation of the FTSE100 market by targeting the small and medium‐sized client sectors as avenues for further growth. The audit market is competitive at the initial tender stage but concentration has allowed firms to significantly increase audit fees on repeat engagements.

A number of theoretical and empirical limitations are acknowledged that could further increase the statistical power of the tests.

The study should be of interest to regulatory bodies, auditors, audit clients and academics.

This paper fills a gap in the literature regarding the evolution of CRs and accounting service fees over a significant time frame.

The purpose of this paper is to address “the existing literature gap on the information content of derivatives reporting”. Prior work finds failings in compliance with mandatory reporting requirements in respect of financial instruments and derivative financial instruments. Instead of identifying weaknesses in compliance the paper identifies where firms over‐comply or in other words, where firms voluntarily disclose more than they are required and whether this is incremental information or serves another purpose.

The paper reviews the financial instruments disclosures of the FTSE 100 non‐financial IFRS 7 compliant firms. Based on these results, on a case‐by‐case basis the authors address potential causes and rationale for this extra disclosure.

Prior research suggests that it is counter intuitive to argue that firms will provide voluntary disclosure in a mandatory reporting environment because information of this sort tends to be proprietary and competition sensitive, not to mention costly to prepare. However, it is found that firms have voluntarily published information in excess of the requirements and the authors suggest that this extra detail is most commonly associated with a legitimation strategy.

In spite of the importance of derivatives usage and management in addition to the increased and often complex reporting requirements, the authors are not aware of any previous study of this type.

This editorial aims to provide an overview of the four papers included in this special issue. It discusses the development of voluntary disclosure research and its potential future directions.

The editorial adopts a review approach, identifying key issues and provides a context for future research.

The editorial highlights some of the difficulties with research into voluntary disclosure, calls for further reflection and suggests factors to consider in future research in this area.

The editorial provides a review of current issues in disclosure research and reviews these papers which demonstrate a particular approach to research that is relevant to both practitioners and academics.

This paper provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date (1997–2016) review of the archival empirical risk-reporting literature. The reviewed papers are classified into two principal themes: the incentives for and/or informativeness of risk reporting. Our review demonstrates areas of significant divergence in the literature specifically: mandatory versus voluntary risk reporting, manual versus automated content analysis, within-country versus cross-country variations in risk reporting, and risk reporting in financial versus non-financial firms. Our paper identifies a number of issues which require further research. In particular we draw attention to two: first, a lack of clarity and consistency around the conceptualization of risk; and second, the potential costs and benefits of standard-setters’ involvement.