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This paper aims to examine the patterns of intellectual capital reporting (ICR) of large listed firms in a developing nation, Sri Lanka. The aim of this study is to highlight the differences in ICR practice between developing and developed nations.

The paper begins by examining each of the top 30 firms by market capitalization listed on the Colombo stock exchange in 1998/1999 and 1999/2000. Using the content analysis method, it reviews the annual reports of these firms to determine the types of intellectual capital (IC) items reported in Sri Lanka. It then compares these findings with a similar study undertaken in Australia during the same period.

The findings in this paper highlight the need for a uniform ICR definition and a reporting framework that provides comparative and consistent reporting under the auspices of a regulatory body. ICR differences were identified between Sri Lankan and Australian firms, and it is argued that these differences can be attributed to economic, social and political factors.

This paper highlights important policy issues for Australia, Sri Lanka and other nations. These issues are even more pertinent in the light of the gradual international adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs), formulated by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

Most papers on intellectual capital reporting have focused on firms in developed countries. This paper offers insights into comparative reporting practices between a developed and a developing country.

Motivated by the increased attention on intellectual capital reporting (ICR) from regulatory bodies, practitioners, and researchers and the recent calls for companies to supplement and complement their traditional financial statements with intellectual capital (IC) disclosure, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers of ICR among the companies listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE).

Content analysis was applied to the annual reports of all companies listed on the KSE in 2013. A multiple regression analysis was employed to explore the ICR drivers.

Despite the growing importance of ICR in capital markets, the study findings reveal an overall relatively low level of ICR among KSE-listed companies. In addition, the level of ICR varies significantly between companies. The results show that the level of ICR for all KSE-listed companies in 2013 ranged from 0 to 96 percent and the mean was 28 percent. The multiple regression analysis suggests that older, highly leveraged, larger, and profitable KSE-listed companies are associated with higher levels of ICR. Industrial sector is a partial driver.

Surprisingly, many of the KSE-listed companies do not disclose any IC information in their annual reports. Given the increasingly important role that IC information plays in capital markets, regulatory bodies should encourage, stimulate, and guide companies to report IC information. The findings offer insights as to the drivers of ICR that should improve efforts to develop recommendations that push for greater IC disclosure in corporate annual reports.

The study is the first examination of ICR drivers in Kuwait. It contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence about ICR in a market with specific economic, social, and cultural characteristics. It enhances our understanding of ICR by revealing some of its drivers.

The paper aims to study and compare the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) annual (AR) and intellectual capital reports (ICR) with an earlier study. The paper seeks to analyse the reporting practices of intellectual capital (IC) within this organisation.

The case study organisation is an Australian not‐for‐profit (NFP) organisation and the study took place over three years. A content analysis of ARCBS AR and ICR between 2002 and 2005 was conducted. Several interviews were conducted with a number of key ARBCS staff during 2006 to identify why and how they reported IC information.

The findings indicate a greater focus on internal and external capital with less focus on human capital. The frequency with which certain internal, external and human capital elements occur in ARCBS reports can be explained by macro, meso and micro factors which affect the organisation and influence the information it provides to its stakeholders. It was found that the AR addressed the concerns of multiple stakeholder groups, whereas the ICR are more targeted towards specific audiences.

This paper examines ICR and IC frameworks in the context of the NFP sector. Few prior studies consider this sector.

The purpose of this article is to analyze intellectual capital (IC) measurement, management, and reporting practices at organizational level, with the aim to address a relevant research question: are IC reports used as accountability or as image-building tools? The article presents a single in-depth case study of an Italian nonprofit organization (NPO) which has been measuring and reporting its IC for several years. The research project was conducted using an interpretative approach, by analyzing organizational IC reports in the light of a framework, derived from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and IC literature, able to provide researchers with useful insights to interpret the role played by IC report in the investigated organization. The lenses provided by the designed framework give researchers the opportunity to offer a skillful interpretation of the information provided by the IC report. From the analysis, it results that the investigated NPO use IC report more as a managerial rather than an accountability tool. Even though the use of a single case study provides in-depth and rich data, it also limits the generalizability of the observations to other companies. Moreover, the results obtained can be influenced by the model built and adopted to address the research question. The findings can support companies to enable IC reporting practices and readers to understand the orientation of the companies towards a reputation or an accountability approach by reading the IC report using the research model. The article fills a gap in the research of voluntary disclosure of NPOs from a different approach (i.e., to analyze IC reports to make evident the approach followed in disclosing IC information). So doing, the article contributes to narrowing the gap between IC theory and practice and offers new insights on the reasons why NPOs disclose IC.

Intangibles are the main value drivers of a firm. This consideration implies that it becomes more and more important/urgent to measure and report intellectual capital. The new reporting statement (intellectual capital report) is not yet commonly used by firms, but many, on a voluntary basis, already publish environmental, social and sustainability reports, which contain much information on intangibles. Starting from this point, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that it is possible to integrate the information contained in both reports in a single ad hoc integrated document, having both external and internal communication aims.

The paper addresses three research questions: whether the theoretical premises exist for the integration of the two different frameworks; which frameworks should be chosen as a starting point; and which features should have an integrated framework. Theoretical premises for integration have been found in the research‐based view (RBV) theory. To chose the social report and intellectual capital report (ICR) framework to use as starting points, the authors analyze the frameworks from the intellectual capital (IC) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature; then choose the frameworks (GRI3 and Meritum reports) founded on an evolved notion of, respectively, corporate responsibility and IC, which share the same features – the orientation towards stakeholders, the managerial approach, and the focus on intangible activities that a new integrated framework should respect.

Starting from the selected CSR and ICR frameworks, the authors planned and designed a new, ad hoc model of corporate communication, able to integrate the social and intangible dimensions in a single document, named the Intangible Global Report (IGR). The IGR framework is composed of five dimensions, three derived from the ICR (human capital, structural capital, relational capital) and two from the GRI report (environmental, social). The different aspects of each dimension are surveyed in terms of intangible resources, activities and impacts, measured by financial and non‐financial indicators.

The main originality of the paper consists in providing a general framework for firms to integrate all their intangible information in a single document – the IGR framework – focused on the firm's strategy, which allows the stakeholder to visualize all the firm's intangibles, how a company conducts its activities and the impacts that such activities have on the environmental, social and IC dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intellectual capital reporting (ICR) practices of listed non‐financial companies in Bangladesh as an example of a South Asian developing country, and to empirically investigate some company characteristics as determinants of such practices.

This is an empirical study of ICR by 90 listed companies in Bangladesh in 2008‐2009 using content analysis of annual reports. The study uses a weighted disclosure index and ordinary least squares regression analyses to test the association between company characteristics and the extent of ICR.

The study finds that despite the stock market growing significantly during the recession period, there is a tendency of companies not to disclose IC. The study also confirms that size and industry are important attributes to explain the IC disclosure (ICD) issues in Bangladesh. Unlike prior studies, the study finds that the IT sector does not tend to disclose more extensively, and that companies currently fail to disclose many important items such as patents, trademark and copyrights. The result is an indication that companies in Bangladesh are reluctant to disclose IC. The study is also similar to Abeysekera and Guthrie, who found that Sri Lanka is a proactive rather reactive country in terms of ICR. The study also finds ICR depends on the self‐interests of the company.

The scope of this study is limited to single year, 2008‐2009. It would be interesting to replicate this study in other developing countries or a group of developing countries in South Asia that have many similarities to the Bangladesh socio‐economic environment. Nevertheless, the study incorporates the current level of ICR transparency in Bangladesh.

Unlike previous studies, the present study is based on a developing country where the capital market is growing significantly during the recession years. The study also develops a weighted disclosure index in a developing country context, based on the extensive literature of ICD and some new characteristics, namely non‐family ownership, audit committee and liquidity risk.

Increasingly, researchers in the field of intellectual capital (IC) need to be able to justify the specific research methods they use to collect the empirical data that they examine to support and test opinions regarding the merit of different approaches to managing and reporting IC. Of the various methods available to researchers seeking to understand intellectual capital reporting (ICR), content analysis is the most popular. The aim of this paper is to review the use of content analysis as a research method in understanding ICR and to offer some observations on the practical utility of the method. Further, the paper examines several research method issues relating to the use of content analysis that have been discussed in the social environmental accounting literature, but not as yet in the IC literature, which we believe are relevant to investigations underway in the field of ICR. This paper reports on several developmental issues we have confronted when using content analysis to examine the voluntary disclosure of IC in annual reports by various organisations. The paper also suggests two theoretical foundations for further investigation into the voluntary disclosure of IC by organisations, and suggests why content analysis is well matched to both these theories as a means to collect empirical data to test research propositions.

Specific asset recognition rules often bar expenses for research and development (R&D) from recognition on corporate balance sheets. This tangible‐intangible accounting asymmetry has led to the development of intellectual capital reports (ICRs) for intangibles in general and for R&D in particular. Thus, two dichotomous reporting formats coexist in corporate disclosure. The purpose of this article is to bring together more closely the information on project intangibles from R&D provided by voluntary and mandatory reporting systems.

The authors used an experimental case study approach in a joint research project with a non‐university research and technology organisation (RTO). The methods deployed in the project included semi‐structured interviews, Delphi techniques and normative reasoning.

The results show that it is possible to use financial reporting's systematic approach and typical layout to ally the presumed strengths of financial reporting (i.e. the existence of standardised ways of interpretation and an educated readership) and indicator‐based ICRs (i.e. the capability of capturing the generic features of innovation activity).

Given the predominance of financial reporting's educated readership, it is useful to produce voluntary disclosures in such a form that the information can easily be embedded in the overall picture painted by financial numbers.

Inductive‐analytical ICRs are typically not intertwined with financial accounting. The article elaborates on linkages between financial accounting and inductive‐analytical reporting models and proposes a classification scheme for project intangibles from R&D based on information reliability.

The aim of this paper is to review the use of content analysis as a research method in understanding social and environmental accounting (SEA) and to examine current contemporary foci of this research tradition. Further, seeks to examine several research method issues relating to the use of content analysis are examined.

Contemporary focus and research issues are analyzed to provide some future directions for scholars in the field of SEA, by categorizing work in the SEA, social environmental reporting (SER) and intellectual capital reporting (ICR) literature, according to the following: normative literature/theory/commentaries; focus of empirical investigation; quality SER research; combined research methodologies; content analysis method issues.

Literature indicates that few attempts have been made to combine other research methodologies with content analysis, although it has proven fruitful with the limited investigation undertaken to examine aspects of SER. Further extending the performance reporting by combining SER with ICR may provide useful information.

Increasingly, researchers in the field of SEA need to be able to justify the specific research methods they use when collecting the empirical data that they examine in order to support and test opinions regarding the merit of different approaches to managing, measuring and reporting of SEA.

Traditionally, the focus of content analysis has been narrow but this paper breaks new ground in proposing to broaden the focus to include SEA and to combine content analysis with other methods of data collection.

The paper aims to explore the economic, political and social premises according to which some governmental agencies have decided to promote IC reporting in their country. Firstly, it will examine the contextual premises and conditions that have encouraged (or inhibited) IC reporting. Secondly, it will investigate the way these premises and conditions interact in different ways, thus establishing (loosely) coupled relationships.

The relationship between IC recommendation for corporate reporting and contextual linkages will be analysed from a political economy perspective, as proposed by Cooper and Sherer, and others, and as modified by the type of discursive analysis inspired by Burchell et al.

In light of the relationship that the paper will establish between different discourses, IC will be understood not as a merely corporate neutral technique but as an economic and socially constructed phenomenon aimed at re‐launching the growth of a country. In this way, it will be explored from both within – in terms of methods and their usefulness for its “supporters” – and also externally – in relation to how it is perceived and in turn communicated by politicians who are “delegates of different cognitive and social institutions”, as Manninen said in 1996.

A political economy analysis of IC reporting enables the opening up of the black box of IC reporting in relation to public policy, outlining a useful approach for practitioners and policy makers.