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So far, there has been little research on the extent or implications of corporate reporting on the Internet. This paper identifies the type of work which has been done to date in this new field, and proceeds to outline some possible areas and questions for future research work. The discussion falls into the five following principal areas: Corporate governance, and the nature of the stakeholder/company relationship; The company’s viewpoint: incentives and disincentives for expanded financial reporting; Verification: the changing role of audit; Information/communication issues; Ethical, behavioural and philosophical aspects.

Accounting regulation is a highly topical issue for listed companies in Europe. From 1 January 2005 all companies listed in the EU member states have been required to produce financial reports compliant with international accounting standards. Financial reports will be comparable with each other only if full compliance with the international standards can be ensured. Historically, however, an enduring weakness of the international standard‐setting regime has been its inability to enforce compliance with its standards. There is a danger that implementation and compliance will be variable across the adopting countries, and that deeply ingrained national reporting practices will persist. Where such practices include a high incidence of earnings management techniques and behaviours, any improvement in the quality of reported financial information may be slow to materialise.

Despite attempts to secure harmonisation of accounting practice, significant variations in accounting rules and practice continue to arise in European countries, variations which give rise to compliance costs for multinational companies. First, this paper considers the relevance of international accounting harmonisation for European business. It then proceeds to examine accounting regulations in three countries: Spain, Sweden and Austria, highlighting the key regulatory issues of the “true and fair” view requirement and the link between taxation and accounting. The three countries are selected because of the interesting contrasts which they provide; these contrasts are examined in detail in the paper. The work is based on a series of interviews carried out with leading accounting practitioners in the three countries during 1996‐1997. The paper concludes that there are significant obstacles to accounting harmonisation in Europe and that there is potential for continuing diversity of national accounting practice.

This paper reports the results of a recent research study into the use of the Internet for communicating corporate financial information to stakeholders. Senior officers in a sample of smaller listed companies in the UK were interviewed about their use of the Internet for reporting corporate financial information, and about the ways in which they identify corporate stakeholders and their needs. It was found that assessment of stakeholder requirements is haphazard, but is informed in many cases by an intention to correct long‐standing inequities in the provision of corporate information. Because the assessment of needs is largely intuitive, it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of the Internet as a mechanism for communication of corporate financial information. However, it is clear that the additional medium of communication offered by the Internet has not so far radically changed the essential nature of the dialogue between company and stakeholder, which remains asymmetrical.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing literature field of intellectual capital (IC) by analysing corporate IC disclosures by leading Spanish firms over a three‐year period from 2000 to 2002.

Content analysis methodology was applied to the annual reports of 12 Spanish companies over a three‐year period.

A statistically significant increase was found in the volume of IC disclosures over a three‐year period. There is a greater volume of communication in the area of external (customer/relational) capital than in either internal or employee capital. This corresponds with the results of other country‐based studies. However, IC reporting remains at a relatively limited level, and disclosures are dominated by customer relational items.

This paper makes an original contribution to the growing body of empirical studies on IC reporting and describes the development of IC reporting in Spain.

Traces the history of the imposition of a comprehensive tax‐accounting link in Sweden, identifying ways in which professional accountants have sought to circumvent the impact of the link and considering the effect of the link on the three bodies in Sweden involved in formulating accounting regulations and recommendations. Analyses the range of arguments put forward in the literature in Sweden for and against the binding link. Reports on interviews with leading Swedish accounting practitioners on their experience and views of the link.

This study examines social responsibility information disclosure on the Internet by Portuguese listed companies in 2003 and also analyses annual reports as a disclosure medium for those companies which disclose such information on their web pages. The results are interpreted through the lens of legitimacy theory, according to which companies disclose social responsibility information to present a socially responsible image so that they can legitimise their behaviours to their stakeholder groups. Companies in sectors that have a larger potential impact on the environment or in industries with a high visibility among consumers seem to exhibit greater concern to improve the corporate image through social responsibility information disclosure. Results thus suggest that legitimacy theory may be an explanation of social responsibility disclosure by Portuguese listed companies.

In a full blaze of comings and goings, it is unnecessary to remind ourselves that the holiday season is upon us; mass travel to faraway places. The media have for months, all through the winter, been extolling a surfeit of romantic areas of the world, exspecially on television; of colourful scenes, exotic beauties, brilliant sunshine everywhere; travel mostly by air as so‐called package tours — holidays for the masses! The most popular areas are countries of the Mediterranean littoral, from Israel to Spain, North Africa, the Adriatic, but of recent years, much farhter afield, India, South‐east Asia and increasingly to the USA.