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Universities are proper knowledge institutions, since knowledge represents both the input and the output of their activities. Several guidelines have been issued by the European Union and national governments for the promotion of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure by universities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the amount and nature of voluntary IC disclosure in Italian universities and to gauge the opinion of university managers on IC managing and reporting.

The study applies content analysis and a survey. The content analysis was applied to a group of voluntary social reports (SRs) issued by Italian universities, while the survey was submitted to all top managers of Italian universities.

The research found a significant amount of IC disclosure in SRs. Also, university top managers demonstrated an awareness of benefits deriving from IC managing and reporting practices, both for decision-making processes and to respond to stakeholder’s needs.

The current paper contributes to IC literature by providing an assessment of IC voluntary disclosure practices in Italian universities, analysing reports other than the annual report (which is the only document media analysed by research so far). Furthermore, while previous research has focussed on IC disclosure, the current study investigates the motivations for IC managing and provides insights into the benefits deriving from IC reporting in universities.

The study aims to raise awareness of the issues to foster further debate in the area of gender (in) accounting. In the process, opportunities for future research are identified and outlined.

Literature review and a discussion of the implications lead to the identification of opportunities for future research.

Women are under-represented at senior levels in all walks of life. Where women reach senior positions, they are often paid less than men in similar positions. Countries and organisations with more gender equality do better.

Organisations and countries will be better off if they have a good representation of women at all organisational levels in all walks of life.

The authors’ perspectives of the prior literature and the identification of future research opportunities around gender (in) accounting are presented.

Although there is no mandatory requirement for Italian universities to report beyond a financial report, several universities have produced a social report, despite the context of increasing pressure to cut financial resources. This study aims to investigate if Italian state universities produce voluntary social reports and, if so, what they disclose. Also to explore their motivations to do so and the main difficulties encountered.

Content analysis is applied to the total pool of Italian universities’ social reports obtained. Also, a subsequent online survey was undertaken with preparers of those social reports.

The findings indicate that a social report is not a common practice in Italian universities. Subsequent online interviews and thematic analysis found that a key individual within the university played a pivotal role in developing a social report. In the pool of reports examined, there were few social and environmental aspects disclosed. Also the respondents to the survey highlighted that the main difficulty in the development of social reports was the lack of systematic collection of non-financial information within the university.

The study is limited to the Italian university social reports produced and those answering the online survey.

Most of the prior Italian literature on social reports is normative in nature and focuses on what should be reported, rather than on what was actually reported. This study is an attempt at analysing the pool of Italian universities’ social reports and is useful for understanding how and why organisations voluntarily produce social reports.

The European university context reveals a high degree of gender inequality. In Italy, the overall female employment rate is significantly lower than in the rest of Europe; nevertheless, gender equality in universities is consistent with the European average. In 2006, the Italian Government required public organisations (thus state universities) to formulate positive action plans (PAPs) and disclose the positive actions planned for the following three years to promote gender equality. However, the law does not provide any guideline for the contents of the PAPs. The purpose of this paper is to analyse gender equality disclosure in PAPs to investigate whether and how Italian State Universities (ISUs) are taking a role in promoting gender equality.

The paper uses content analysis to investigate contents of gender disclosure in 28 PAPs. The authors developed a coding instrument based on the Guidelines for Gender Equality Programmes in Science.

The paper found that most PAPs are focused on creating a favourable environment for women inside the organisation, while little attention has been paid to creating gender awareness in research and teaching activities, as well as in supporting women’s leadership. The paper concludes that ISUs are failing as key players in the cultural change of the society toward gender equality.

First, the paper contributes to the accounting literature by providing an analysis of accounting for gender by universities. Second, it adds to the debate on positive actions for gender equality in the university sector.

Recently Italy has engaged in an extensive promotion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for not-for-profit organisations (NPOs). A major reform of the sector was approved in 2016, with the aim of combating corruption. Accordingly, NPOs will be eligible to receive public funds and tax benefits only when they demonstrate that they produce social impacts through their activities. To give an account of the social impacts produced, the reform introduced mandatory reporting requirements: the formulation of a social report (SR) that has to be published on the NPO’s website along with its financial statement.

The chapter first reviews the Italian ongoing path of reform for NPOs, focusing on the mandatory reporting requirements. Second, it reviews the previous empirical research on SRs in Italian NPOs to provide a picture of the voluntarily reporting practices before the recent reform entered into force.

The chapter finds that SRs in Italian NPOs are in their infancy. They are not used to disclose social impacts or to legitimate NPOs. SR practices usually lack common frameworks, disclosure of outputs and outcomes, stakeholder engagement, dissemination and assurance by third parties.

The chapter contributes to the international debate on CSR by providing the perspective of reporting requirements and practices in Italian NPOs. It analyses the ongoing reform of NPOs and gives the stock of SR practices prior to the reform entering into force. This makes it possible for future research to assess the impact produced by the reform.

This chapter contributes to the Public Value (PV) literature in relation to accounting by providing evidence on its content's operationalization through performance measurement. In particular, it establishes the link with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which may work as guiding principles of a public organization’s action. Accordingly, organizations embedding SDGs include them in their strategic decisions and disclose them through performance measurement and narratives.

The SDGs' presence is explored in the PV of a sample of Italian health institutes through documentary analysis of their performance plans. The aim is to verify if and how SDGs are pursued and whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected PV content.

Besides Goal No. 3 (Health), the PV content of the investigated institutes contains various SDGs. Before the pandemic, their PV was aligned with SDGs mainly related to prosperity, economic growth and social inclusion. In the following period, the number of SDGs increased, introducing planet and environmental protection dimensions. No one explicitly mentions pursuing SDGs, revealing a non-institutionalized sensitivity of managers towards SDGs. The analysis distinguishes between ‘core’ SDGs, revealed mostly by traditional performance measures disclosing the achievement of institutes' mission, and ‘complementary’ SDGs, expressed mostly through narratives. This can derive from performance measurement, which employs the language of performativity, while the contribution to society is relegated in the narratives, making them less incisive.

This paper seeks to analyse social report guidelines and practices within Italian local governments (ILGs). First, it compares the contents of the two Italian governmental guidelines for developing social reports in public sector organisations with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guideline, to determine similarities and differences in disclosures. Second, it examines a group of social reports issued by ILGs, to explore the incidence, frequency, and quality of disclosure, as against the GRI guideline.

The study uses content analysis to test the nature/content of the governmental guidelines, and to determine what was disclosed in a group of ILGs' social reports. The paper analyses the social reports by applying the Guthrie and Farneti coding instrument, extended by including the Italian governmental guidelines.

Several observations emerge from the present study. First, from the comparison of the GRI and the Italian governmental guidelines, it emerges that only a few categories of the latter are similar to the GRI and these concern mainly general aspects. Second, the disclosure of categories and elements in the social reports, as against the coding instrument, was found to be fragmentary. The paper concludes that the Italian governmental guidelines are of a managerial nature, and they have little to do with sustainability, except for aspects related to labour.

Little research has been published on social reporting practices within the public sector, unlike the private sector. In Italy social reports are an emerging practice, with a growing interest paid by the government and academia. Nevertheless, published research is mainly of a normative nature, and there is a gap on what actually is in social reports.

The current research aims to investigate what Italian state universities consider as intellectual capital (IC) in their performance plans. Universities assume a specific responsibility in the production and dissemination of knowledge and in the investment in research and human resources; consequently, a central role has been given to IC approaches in managing universities. Drawing from this, in 2009 Italy required state universities to issue a performance plan with a section devoted to IC.

A content analysis was conducted to discover the type and extent of IC strategies in a group of 44 contemporary Italian state university performance plans issued in 2011.

The findings show a variable focus on IC items, with a particular emphasis on aspects related to the development of relationships with external partners, supporting the idea that nowadays the university sector is strongly investing in the development of relational capital to achieve its third mission.

In assessing practices of IC planning in Italian state universities, the current study highlights the path of development that will be undertaken by the Italian university system in the near future. This path allows us to evaluate the strategic position that the Italian university system will cover in the European higher education arena.

The paper makes an original contribution to research on IC strategies in universities, given the lack of empirical studies on such issues. It represents one of the first attempts to analyse IC in Italian state universities’ planning processes.

Acknowledging the strategic relevance of assessing and managing intellectual capital (IC), this editorial first aims to discuss a classification of the IC assessment strategies and second seeks to introduce the main topics investigated by the papers collected in this special issue. The notion of IC assessment strategy is interpreted as the set of economic and managerial decisions and purposes characterising the assessment of an organisation's knowledge assets. It is argued that the definition of a knowledge asset assessment strategy has to take into account two dimensions: on the one hand, the nature of the managerial approach to be adopted for the assessment, distinguishing between “value management” and “value communication”; and on the other hand, the most appropriate “evaluation architecture” to be used in order to gather and report the assessment information for control and decision making.

The approaches, evidences and insights discussed in this introduction result from the integration of the theory analysis with the insights extracted from the discussions that took place at the conference “International Forum on Knowledge Assets Dynamics” organized in June 2012 in Matera, Italy. At this leading international conference, experts discussed the importance of intellectual capital for organizational business excellence in the 21st century business landscape, the new IC key‐value drivers to focus on in order to face emergent competitive challenges, and the research and management practices most appropriate to address complexity, uncertainty and changes of today's business landscape.

Four IC assessment strategies are proposed, addressing their relevance for management actions. This represents the background to introduce the main topics investigated by the papers that are collected in this special issue.

This editorial outlines the key IC assessment strategies that organisations and practitioners should take into account when designing measurement systems aimed at gathering information to inform IC management actions.