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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of human resource disclosure on corporate image.

The information about human resources presented in their annual reports by 105 Spanish listed companies was grouped in three categories, previously defined in literature. We distinguish information about human capital (items usually included as human capital in Intellectual Capital reports), social information about employees and information about ethics questions relative to employees. A content analysis of these 105 annual reports was conducted to measure human resource disclosure and a regression analysis was carried out to study the impact of this information on company image.

The findings reflect the significant effect of the three categories of human resource disclosure on corporate image.

This study might encourage firms to improve their disclosure policy on issues related to human capital, such as training, and on social and ethical aspects of employees, such as health and safety at work and working rights.

This paper contributes to research on human resources by confirming the impact not only of information about human capital, which is mainly oriented to shareholders, but of social and ethical information about employees, oriented as well as to stakeholders, on corporate reputation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore if any disparity exists between human capital information desired by financial analysts and fund managers and actual disclosure of such information in company annual reports, in the context of developing countries.

Financial analysts and fund managers were interviewed to obtain opinions on the importance attributed to human capital information and whether their desired information is disclosed in the annual reports. Content analysis was then used to assess the extent and nature of human capital information actually provided in the annual reports of 100 listed companies in Malaysia.

Interviewees seek information on company management and key corporate decision makers who could provide a firm with competitive advantage. However, the human capital information provided is limited, and tends to focus on directors, many of whom may be figureheads with little impact on the way companies are run and in creating value for the firm. Accordingly, analysts rely on alternative sources to get their desired information – a costly process for private shareholders.

The paper contributes to the literature on the demand for, and disclosure of, human capital information in the context of developing countries. It identifies the inadequacy of current human capital disclosure practices in company annual reports. The authors theorise that in developing countries, resource dependence, legitimacy-seeking and “culture” cause companies to pay relatively more attention to figureheads than value creators.

This paper aims at exploring the extent and determinants of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) in India.

Content of annual reports of 200 firms classified on their market capitalization is analysed using search terms to find out the extent and nature of disclosure. The period of study is 2010-11 and 2013-14. Paired t-test is used to see if there is any significant change in the level of disclosure between two time periods. The various determinants and their impacts are captured using a regression equation.

The analysis showed evidence that market capitalization, ownership and age of the firms are the major determinants of ICD in India. Performance, size and type of industry mattered only for large-cap firms. Disclosure levels are seen to increase with market capitalization. Human capital and external capital is highly reported by all categories of firms. The overall disclosure by all categories has significantly increased, whereas that of human capital and external capital has increased significantly only in small-cap and mid-cap firms.

This paper looks at size, market and performance-related variables and their impact on the extent of disclosure. It takes representative firms from three indices based on their market capitalization and evaluates them, thus making results and findings reliable. This is the first paper which takes a large cross section sample from across 12 sectors and also performs a longitudinal analysis. This paper is of interest to managers of firms who can affect the policies of their firms in making robust changes in disclosure practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent and quality of voluntary intellectual disclosures by information technology (IT) companies of China and India.

The research method adopted for this study is content analysis. The research is limited to the intellectual capital information disclosed in companies’ annual report. The sample for this research is based on 20 IT companies listed by market capitalization listed on Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange market, and the largest 20 companies listed on Indian stock market.

Indian IT companies tends to perform better than Chinese IT companies in extent and quality of disclosures. The extent of disclosure of both countries is at a relatively high level. The most frequently reported disclosure category in India is external capital, while the least one is human capital. In China, external capital is the most frequently disclosed category, while the internal capital is the least one.

The sample size of the study is relatively small. Future research can expand on the sample size to get an overview of the intellectual capital disclosure, and conduct a longitudinal study to capture the trend of reporting practices.

The findings of this study have implications for policy makers and standard setters for rethinking of inclusion of intellectual capital disclosure in annual reports as compulsory items. This will not only add tot he quality of information but various stakeholders will be able to make an assessment of the values of a firm.

Previous studies of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure have covered little on the relationship between market capitalization and quality of disclosure and cross-country disclosure on IC. This research tends to extend the literature on IC disclosure.

This chapter expands the existing literature by examining voluntary intellectual capital disclosure provided by listed Romanian companies in 2010 annual reports.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the trend of intellectual capital disclosures (ICD) over a three‐year period (2008‐2010), when the Malaysian business environment was characterized by a number of major events such as the recent 2008/2009 global financial crisis and corporate governance restructuring.

A checklist was constructed to measure the extent and quality of ICD in Malaysian corporate annual reports. The extent of ICD was measured on a dichotomous basis (0, 1) while the quality of ICD was measured using a four‐point scale (0‐3).

The results showed an increasing trend of the ICD and a significant overall increase by the sample Malaysian companies. The results also revealed that there are significant differences between the categories of the IC disclosures, with external capital related information accounting for the largest portion. However, only human capital disclosures significantly increased over time.

The time series analysis carried out in this study observed that, despite the general ICD increasing trend, item‐specific analysis showed inconsistent results. Hence, the regulators may want to devise reporting guidelines for IC for Malaysian public listed companies.

This paper is one of the few which investigate trends in ICD following significant changes in the business environment in an attempt to determine if those changes have some impact on ICD practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of board size on firms disclosing more, rather than less, strategic and tactical intellectual capital resources using the top 26 of the 52 firms ranked by the Nairobi Stock Exchange for market capitalization in 2002 and in 2003. This study identifies intellectual capital disclosure by three separate categories: internal capital, external capital, and human capital. Hence, this study examines the influence of board size on six disclosure outcomes.

The study develops hypotheses using the resource dependency theory. Using content analysis for data generation, this study classifies firms that disclose more versus those that disclose less, using the mean for all firms for each disclosure outcome.

Using logistic regression, the study examines the influence of board size on each disclosure outcome and finds that firms disclosing more tactical internal capital and more strategic human capital have larger boards.

The findings provide insights into how a larger board size can help boards to overcome skill deficiencies in making more discretionary disclosure related to future earnings.

This study analyses the influence of the board size on six aspects of intellectual capital disclosure.

In recent years there has been increasing focus on the importance of intellectual capital disclosure. The major resources of the football industry are human ‐ the players (as well as coaches and management) and supporters, yet the traditional accounting framework is largely ineffective in capturing these ‘hidden’ values. This paper reviews research on the quality and extent to which 19 listed professional English football clubs are reporting intellectual capital in their annual reports for the 2002 period. A disclosure index was developed and applied, giving scores for categories of disclosure and for the football clubs. The research findings suggest that components of intellectual capital were poorly reported by listed professional football clubs. External capital reporting was the highest scoring category, followed by human capital. However internal capital reporting scored the lowest. The research findings indicated a positive significant correlation between the size of clubs, club performance and their overall intellectual capital disclosure, in line with previous research in different industries. In conclusion, the importance of intellectual capital is recognized in the football industry as evidenced by the quality and quantity of IC disclosure by some clubs. However, the variability in reporting of different components of intellectual capital suggests that there is considerable room for improvement if the key resources of the football industry are to be truly reflected in the accounting system.

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the content and extent of human capital disclosure by Spanish companies. It studies various factors related to the board of directors’ composition and functioning. These factors can be seen as mechanisms of corporate governance and the moderating role of managerial ownership, which help predict the behaviour of managers in relation to the human capital disclosure.

This study develops and applies a more comprehensive framework for coding information on human capital, integrating the intellectual capital and social responsibility perspectives in order to explain the content and extent of human capital disclosure. The research was based on a content analysis of 210 corporate reports from 2007 to 2016. A system-GMM estimator was used to test the hypotheses in four dynamic linear regression models of balanced panel data in order to address concerns of endogeneity.

The results show that companies are adapting to new regulations and voluntarily disclosing information on human capital – a trend which signals their commitment to responsible attitudes towards employees and stakeholders. The results also show that board composition and functioning are mechanisms of supervision, control and legitimacy that promote human capital disclosure, with managerial ownership acting as moderator for aligning interests between managers and stakeholders.

This study contributes to the literature on human capital disclosure by introducing a broader conception of human capital to coding information. It accomplishes this through considering aspects of the intellectual capital and social responsibility approaches, which provide a better understanding of companies’ human capital disclosure. In addition, it seeks to enrich the debate about the effects of corporate governance mechanisms– such as boards of directors and managerial ownership – on human capital disclosure.

This paper examines the going concern of integrated reporting <IR> as the pessimistic about its sustainable value relevance is gaining momentous. The study employs a quantitative approach to data analysis and mainly sourced secondary data from integrated reports of 83 sampled companies.

Utilising data from the companies' integrated reports from 2015 to 2018, the study analyses the impact of <IR> capitals disclosure on corporate sustainable value. <IR> was proxied by its six capital elements, which include financial, manufactured, human, intellectual, natural and social, and relationship capitals, while sustainable value was surrogated by the cost of financing and revenue growth rate. The study develops a checklist and utilises content analysis to score the quality of disclosure by sample companies during the period.

The longitudinal panel data analysis results reveal that on overall disclosure, <IR> capital has a significant positive effect on the revenue growth but fails to document such on the cost of financing. Meanwhile, on the individual level, human capital and natural capital disclosure have an indirect effect on the cost of financing, while all the six subclassifications affect the revenue growth of the sampled companies.

The study sampled only 83 companies across the region due to the limited availability of data. Therefore, the generalisation of findings might be hindered, and further examination might be considered as more data become available.

The study would support the regulators in developing countries to monitor <IR> practices for their domestic companies. It would assist the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) to review the industry's current <IR> practices and give the reason for better <IR> implementation in the future, from both minority and majority economies.

The study is among the pioneer studies that would consider <IR> research across the Asian continent. The study contributes to the recent discussion about sustainable value relevance of <IR>. Also, it would provide some level of incentive to those charged with governance concerning the voluntary compliance with the <IR> framework.