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Breaks with the prior literature on intellectual capital disclosure practices in two major ways. First, provides a longitudinal examination of intellectual capital disclosure practices in the annual reports of 31 FTSE 100 listed companies from 1996‐2000. Second, investigates the relationship between intellectual capital performance and the extent of intellectual capital disclosure. Between 1996 and 2000 the quantity of intellectual capital disclosure increased. Empirical findings did not indicate a systematic relationship between intellectual capital performance and the quantity of disclosure during the survey period. Results, however, suggest that if intellectual capital performance is too high the amount of disclosure is reduced. This negative association may support the suggestion that firms reduce intellectual capital disclosures when performance reaches a threshold level for fear of competitive advantage being lost. Leverage, industry exposure and listing status was also found to have an influence on the quantity of disclosure.

To investigate, compare and document the magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure to sustainability disclosure during a transition from a voluntary to mandated “comply or explain” sustainability reporting regime. And to empirically test if, during the regime transition period, changes in the magnitude (extent) of sustainability disclosure is a significant determinant of changes in the magnitude (extent) of intellectual capital disclosure.

Content analysis of 1,744 annual reports drawn from 436 Singapore listed firms spanning a four-year observation window (i.e. April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2018). The magnitude (number of sentences) and extent (number of items) of (1) intellectual capital disclosure measured using a 38-item index; (2) sustainability disclosure of a 105-item index; and (3) 15-item index to measure the magnitude and extent of joint sustainability/intellectual capital disclosure.

The average magnitude and extent of sustainability and the joint sustainability/intellectual capital disclosure increased whilst the average magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure increased when regulatory discussion of a change to mandated sustainability reporting emerged. However, in the annual period the mandated sustainability reporting became effective while the average magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure declined. Regression tests indicate a significant (insignificant) association between the change in the magnitude (extent) of sustainability disclosure and intellectual capital disclosure.

From a research perspective, the analysis implies researchers investigating the consequences of mandated sustainability disclosure should consider impact on alternative non-financial disclosure themes and develop theoretical frameworks to derive why and how management may shift non-financial reporting strategies and practices.

For regulators, findings suggest there may be a need to weigh spillover costs of reductions in transparency related to intellectual capital. For investors, declines in the magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure following a transition to mandated sustainability reporting may limit future firm valuation particularly of heavy intangible asset-oriented firms.

Initial study empirically investigating the impact of the transition from a voluntary to mandated sustainability reporting regime on the magnitude and extent of intellectual capital disclosure.

This study highlights the trends of qualitative intellectual capital disclosures and patent statistics in the Indian manufacturing context by considering the numerous patent applications, patent grants, forward citations and backward citations. Furthermore, the study investigates the relation among qualitative disclosures, patent statistics and firm performance.

All manufacturing companies of CNX 500 Index of National Stock Exchange of India Limited are considered. Based on data availability, 243 manufacturing firms spanning across seven major manufacturing sectors are included. Secondary data were obtained from the annual report of companies and patent databases from 2004 to 2005 to 2013–2014, generating a sample of 2,430 firm years. Content analysis and citation analysis are used for collecting the relevant data.

Overall, the study results indicated increasing trends for all types of intellectual capital disclosures. Similar trends are observed for patent applications and patent grants, indicating a surge in patenting activities across the manufacturing sector. However, increasing trends in patenting activities are not reflected for forward and backward citations. In addition, significant differences in means and trend coefficients for qualitative disclosures and patent statistics indicated industry specificity within the Indian manufacturing sector. Furthermore, industry specificity is observed when translating intellectual capital to firm performance. The measure of firm performance, that is, Tobin's Q, is having a significant positive association with qualitative disclosures and patent statistics.

As the study is based on secondary data, its accuracy is limited by the accuracy of the data sources such as the annual reports of companies and patent databases.

The study findings imply that policymakers should devise and execute sector-specific policy interventions. Moreover, managers and policymakers should emphasize the qualitative aspect of patenting activities.

The study is an original work that highlights the trends in qualitative disclosures in the Indian manufacturing context. The value relevance of intellectual capital and patent statistics has been established.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influences of corporate governance on intellectual capital disclosures in chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) statements in annual reports.

Index score, word count and overall tone of CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures are calculated to represent the extent, amount and tone of these disclosures, respectively. With a sample of 78 FTSE 100 companies, this paper uses content analysis and empirical analysis to examine the impacts of board size, board composition and shares concentration on the above three measures of CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures, controlling for company size, profitability and leverage ratio.

Empirical results demonstrate a significant positive relationship between board composition and the extent, amount and tone of CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures and a significant negative relationship between shares concentration and the amount of these disclosures.

This paper focuses on the impacts of corporate governance on CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures. It also groundbreakingly measures the tone of CEOs’ disclosures.

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between intellectual capital disclosures in initial public offerings (IPOs) and post‐issue stock performance.

The analysis is based on a sample of 259 IPOs listing on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) between July 1, 1999 and June 30, 2005. Post‐issue stock performance is measured using market‐adjusted buy‐and‐hold returns across a 500 trading day observation window after listing. Intellectual capital disclosure is measured using an 81‐item index.

The study's major finding is a negative association between the level of intellectual capital disclosure in IPO prospectuses and post‐issue stock performance. The negative association persists regardless of industry type but is stronger for small IPOs relative to larger counterparts.

The study includes only Singapore IPOs within a specific timeframe concentrating on a single disclosure mechanism. Furthermore, the analysis focuses on an association rather than causal relationship.

The findings imply greater intellectual capital prospectus disclosure may contribute to investor over‐optimism leading to higher IPO mispricing. As information becomes available post‐issue, and over‐optimistic expectations are not immediately met, investors aggressively discount shares leading to greater negative post‐issue stock performance for high IC disclosing IPOs. Pre‐listing owners/management may exploit the speculative environment generating higher wealth transfers from investors. Policymakers may need to introduce (some) uniform intellectual capital disclosure requirements to reduce speculative market conditions.

This paper documents the first study to provide empirical evidence of the association between intellectual capital disclosures and post‐issue stock performance; thus, it offers a new path for future intellectual capital disclosure research and understanding.

The purpose of this paper is to study the status and trend of intellectual capital disclosures by selected companies in India. Three categories of intellectual capital disclosures across six industry groups were measured. The relation of the three categories of disclosures, i.e. human capital, relational capital and structural capital disclosures with the measures of organisational performance such as sales, R&D, R&D intensity, net profit and export intensity has also been studied.

Based on National Industrial Classification 2008, six sectors, namely pharmaceutical, basic metals, industrial manufacturing, energy, financial services and information technology were included in the study and 20 companies were selected from each sector based on the availability of data from 2004-2005 to 2013-2014, thus, making a sample of 1,200 firm-years. For collecting the data, a list of keywords related to various dimensions of intellectual capital was prepared and the count of keywords was searched in the annual reports of the companies.

Significant and positive trend coefficients were found in the majority of the sectors. Analysis revealed that trend coefficients differed across various sectors indicating the presence of sector specificity. Results of trend analysis reveal that structural capital-related disclosures have stagnated in case of pharmaceutical sector after hitting the peak. Significant variations were found across sectors in terms of all three types of intellectual capital disclosures. Results of study empirically support the fact that intellectual capital disclosures tend to increase with size of the organisation.

As data have been collected from annual reports of the companies, the accuracy of the findings is limited to the accuracy of the reported data.

The study is an original piece of work. This study provides an insight into the disclosure trend of intellectual capital in an emerging economy.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent and quality of intellectual capital disclosures (ICDs) in the annual reports of the New Zealand local government sector.

This paper makes use of an ICD index constructed through a participatory stakeholder consultation process to develop a disclosure index which measures the extent and quality intellectual capital reporting in the 2004/2005 annual reports of 82 local government authorities in New Zealand. The final index comprised 26 items divided into three categories: internal, external and human capital.

The results indicate that the reporting of intellectual capital by local government authorities is varied. The most reported items were joint ventures/business collaborations and management processes, while the least reported items were intellectual property and licensing agreements. The most reported category of intellectual capital was internal capital, followed by external capital. Human capital was the least reported category.

There are a number of limitations associated with this study. First the research covered only one year (2004/2005) which makes it difficult to draw any trend conclusions. Second, differing legal reporting requirements may make it difficult to compare findings of this research with findings of research conducted in other jurisdictions. The final limitation of this study is its exploratory nature of this research and the use of a disclosure index to measure disclosure levels.

The results in this paper indicate that local authorities are disclosing some aspects of intellectual capital in their annual reports. However, there is no consistent reporting framework and many areas of ICDs do not meet stakeholder expectations.

This paper is unique in that it is the first study to make use of an ICD index to examine intellectual capital reporting by local government authorities.

The capitalisation of intangible investments is discussed controversially in the financial accounting literature. International accounting standards are concerned with this issue and generally demand more intellectual capital to be recognised on the face of the balance sheet. If investors and analysts already gather monetary information about intangible assets from the financial report and find such information useful, then the necessity to complement such information with voluntary intellectual capital disclosure will diminish. Accordingly, there should be an association between recognised intangible assets and voluntary intellectual capital disclosure. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors analyse the voluntary disclosure of 264 investor conference and roadshow presentations of German DAX 30 firms in the year 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007. The authors apply regression models to analyse the association between recognition of intangible assets and voluntary intellectual capital disclosure and control for other determinants of voluntary disclosure.

The authors find that the magnitude of recognised intangible assets is significantly and negatively associated with the quantity and quality of voluntary intellectual capital disclosure. The authors show that this association is mainly driven by goodwill accounting. In more detailed analyses we find different directions (positive, negative and insignificant) of this relationship for different categories of intellectual capital.

Future studies on voluntary intellectual capital disclosure need to consider recognised intangible assets as a determinant to avoid omitted variable problems.

The authors provide descriptive evidence about voluntary intellectual capital disclosure practice of Germany’s largest firms.

The paper provides primary evidence on the association between recognised intangible assets and voluntary intellectual capital disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to document the relationship between intellectual capital disclosure and analyst following for biotechnology firms listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange between 2001 and 2010.

Intellectual capital disclosure was computed from financial statements applying the disclosure index of Bukh et al. (2005), while analyst following data were retrieved from the Institutional Brokers’ Estimate System (I/B/E/S).

The results show that analysts are more likely to follow firms with high intellectual capital disclosure. This finding suggests that analysts wish to follow those firms for which they have more information. The results also show that the most important intellectual capital disclosures for analysts are those related to employees and strategic statements. This paper therefore expands on previous results by raising awareness of which information companies should disclose to the capital market in order to improve analyst following, in turn helping to improve the general disclosure environment.

More relevant methods, such as surveys or interviews with management, could be used to improve the information content of intellectual capital disclosure. Analysts probably deduce the intellectual capital of a firm from interaction with management rather than financial statements.

Firms in and beyond the biotechnology sector can improve their information environment by disclosing more information on intellectual capital in relation to employees and strategic statements in their financial statements.

The findings shed light on the importance of understanding intellectual capital in the biotechnology sector for analysts and investors who wish to value such firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an alternative way by which firms can disclose their intellectual capital to external stakeholders who have an influence on their share price.

The paper shows that, by applying the empirical “event studies” methodology for the 2004‐2005 financial year, the components of intellectual capital are used to classify price‐sensitive company announcements to the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), and to examine any relationship between the disclosure of intellectual capital and the cumulative abnormal return of a firm's share price.

The disclosure of intellectual capital elements in price sensitive company announcements can have an effect on the cumulative abnormal return of a firm's share price. The market is found to be most responsive to disclosures of “internal capital” elements.

The paper is limited to an analysis of the Australian stock market for a one‐year period. It does not take into account the timing of announcement as a variable nor does it consider differences in regulation or operations pertaining to other stock markets.

Researchers and practitioners are now informed that price‐sensitive disclosures to the market containing intellectual capital elements have a marginal effect on the subsequent market valuation of a firm beyond traditional financial reports and external intellectual capital reports.

The paper is the first to examine the disclosure of price‐sensitive stock market information from an intellectual capital perspective, using Australian data.