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In recent years, policymakers have increasingly pushed firms to disclose non-financial information. In Europe, integrated reporting (IR) is an increasingly adopted tool to fully comply with the requirements of the Directive 2014/95/EU. This study aims to examine the financial benefits of IR quality and specifically the effect on the cost of debt.

A manual content analysis is performed to measure the quality of the information contained in integrated reports. A panel regression model is used to test the effect of the IR quality on the cost of debt on a sample of 399 observations (a balanced panel of 133 European listed firms for the period 2017–2019).

Results demonstrate a negative relationship between IR quality and the cost of debt, showing that firms that provide higher quality integrated reports benefit from access to third party financial resources at better conditions.

The results of this study offer important implications for managers and policymakers. The capacity of IR quality to allow a cost of debt reduction should push managers to a greater propensity towards transparency and the dissemination of high quality integrated reports. In addition, in light of the benefits connected to the IR quality, policymakers should push towards the adoption of IR as a solution to fulfil the regulatory obligations deriving from Directive 2014/95/EU.

Results show the goodness of IR as an ideal solution to fulfil the obligations imposed by Directive 2014/95/EU. The important financial benefits associated with IR quality make the high quality integrated report an ideal tool capable of fulfilling regulatory obligations and at the same time guaranteeing a reduction in the cost of debt.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work that analyses the relationship between IR quality and cost of debt.

The sport industry, due to the great importance of intangible assets, represents a field of particular interest for the analysis of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD). However, this sector is still underexplored in the academic literature. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the level of intellectual capital (IC) information disclosed by the most important basketball clubs on their website and the factors capable of influencing the dissemination of such information. Specifically, it examines the impact of social media visibility – in terms of number of social networks, number of posts, number of followers and internet visibility – on the ICD level.

Firstly, this study performs a manual content analysis of the websites of the top 80 European and US basketball clubs aimed at analysing the ICD level. Secondly, it provides for a regression analysis to test the impact of social media visibility on the amount of IC information disclosed.

Empirical results show a low level of ICD among the basketball clubs examined. They also demonstrate the positive impact of number of posts, number of followers and internet visibility on the amount of IC information disclosed online.

This study extends the analysis of the ICD to the sport industry, still little examined by the academic literature. In this regards, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the ICD in the basketball industry.

In recent years, integrated reporting has emerged as a tool to provide environmental information in an interconnected way. However, in the academic literature, the amount of environmental information contained in integrated reports has never been analysed. This study, through the stakeholder-agency theory, aims to fill this important gap by examining the impact of the corporate governance mechanisms on the level of environmental information disseminated by the firms through integrated reports.

A manual content analysis based on an environmental disclosure index consisting of 30 items was performed to measure the amount of environmental information. In addition, a regression analysis was performed on a sample of 129 international firms to examine the impact of the corporate governance mechanisms on the level of environmental information disseminated through integrated reports.

The results show a positive effect of the board size, board gender diversity and corporate social responsibility committee existence on the level of environmental disclosure. Furthermore, they show a non-significant impact of board independence.

This study enriches the literature in several ways. First, it extends the field of application of the stakeholder-agency theory. Second, this study extends the analysis of environmental disclosure to another document – the integrated report – still unexplored by academic literature. Finally, it shed light on the determinants of environmental disclosure.

Human capital (HC) represents a particularly important element capable of guiding the firms’ value creation process in the new economy. The purpose of this study is to analyze the level of HC information contained within integrated reports and to identify the variables that influence the HC disclosure policies of companies.

Research hypotheses, developed on the basis of agency theory, were tested using a regression model on a sample of 137 worldwide companies. A HC disclosure index was designed to examine the level of HC disclosure and a content analysis was used to investigate the integrated reports.

Results showed a positive and significant impact of firm size, board size, board independence and board diversity on the level of HC information disclosed by companies within their integrated reports. On the contrary, they demonstrated a not significant effect of firm profitability.

Results have important implications for corporate executives, high-level corporate governance, policymakers and investors. They point out additional further motivations for creating larger boards and including non-executive members and women on the board. In addition, investors could use the HC disclosure index to evaluate companies’ HC disclosure policies in their investment decisions.

This study extends the agency theory application scope and extends the analysis of HC disclosure to other corporate documents, namely, integrated reports. Besides, it increases knowledge about the factors capable of influencing HC disclosure, identifying a series of elements capable of directly affecting the level of information that companies disclose.

The latest developments in the football industry, the commodification of sport, the excessive focus on profitability and the limited attention to social and environmental aspects have caused a legitimation crisis for football clubs. According to the legitimacy theory, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure represents a tool capable of allowing the construction or repair of legitimacy. This study, in line with this theory, aims to analyse the amount of CSR disclosure provided by football clubs and the determinants, related to visibility, of the level of information provided.

This study uses a manual content analysis on the corporate websites of the 80 football clubs that qualified for the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League group stages for the 2019–2020 year to measure the level of CSR disclosure and subsequently a regression analysis to examine the impact of visibility on the amount of information provided.

Results reveal that football clubs still disclose relatively little information about sustainability issues, and that sports performance visibility, human capital visibility and social media visibility positively affect the amount of information that football clubs disclose.

This study extends the horizons of CSR disclosure to the football industry which is still little explored in the academic literature. Furthermore, it extends the scope of legitimacy theory, showing how CSR disclosure can be a means for football clubs to obtain or repair legitimacy. Furthermore, this study extends the list of determinants of the level of CSR disclosure, showing that visibility can influence the amount of CSR information.

This study aims to investigate the financial and country-level determinants of integrated reporting quality in the financial industry. Specifically, this study analyses the impact of profitability, size, leverage and civil law system on the integrated reporting quality.

Hypotheses were tested using a regression model on a sample of 87 financial institutions. An integrated reporting (IR)-quality scoreboard was used to measure report quality.

The results show that IR quality is significantly and positively influenced by profitability, size, financial leverage and the civil law system.

The results have particularly important implications for large, profitable financial institutions that make greater use of financial leverage and that are localized in non-civil law countries. Managers should increase transparency by expanding the content and quality of the information contained in the integrated reports.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing several financial factors that influence IR quality. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate IR quality in the context of the financial industry.

This study aims to add empirical evidence to the intellectual capital (IC) literature by enhancing understanding of voluntary online IC disclosure (ICD) practices in knowledge-based institutions such as universities from an international standpoint. The ultimate purpose of this study is to examine how different variables related to size, internet visibility and certain corporate governance attributes (i.e. board size and board gender diversity) affect the extent to which universities from different world’s countries convey ICD through websites.

This study investigates a sample of 100 international universities selected according to the QS World University Rankings 2020 to examine the level of ICD provided through their official websites. It uses a content analysis to measure the actual amount of IC information disclosed by these universities and a regression model to test the impact of the explanatory variables.

Empirical results demonstrate a negative impact of the board size and a positive effect of board gender diversity and internet visibility on the level of IC information disclosed by international universities on their website. They also demonstrate a non-significant effect of university size.

This study contributes to enriching the academic literature in different ways. In the first place, it extends the field of application of the stakeholder theory. In the second place, this study sheds light on the actual ICD level of international universities. In the third place, it examines the ICD through a channel – websites – which are still little explored by the academic literature. Finally, this study increases knowledge about the factors that can influence the ICD disclosure of international universities.

This study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance attributes, in the form of board characteristics, on risk disclosures provided through integrated reporting (IR).

Drawing upon an agency theory perspective, this study examines the effect of the main corporate governance board characteristics (size, gender diversity, independence and meeting frequency) on the level of risk disclosure provided by a sample of 95 IR adopters from 24 countries for 2018.

The results suggest that firms are slow to realise IR’s potential to produce innovations in risk disclosure mechanisms. In addition, certain board characteristics, such as gender diversity, independence of directors and meeting frequency, are positive drivers of the risk disclosure provided via IR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure provided via IR. Connecting corporate governance mechanisms to IR risk disclosure practices can contribute to enhancing the practical and theoretical understanding of the role that the board of directors may play in stimulating transparency and accountability about risks via an alternative communication tool, IR, to the benefit of both investors and other stakeholders.

Digitalization is an element capable of improving companies’ financial performance. Despite the relevance of the topic, the financial effects associated with extensive transparency in digitalization choices have rarely been explored in extant literature. This study aims to close this important gap by examining the effect of digitalization-related information on the cost of equity capital.

This study uses manual content analysis on a sample of 122 international listed firms to measure the level of transparency in digitalization choices and a regression model to test the effect of this transparency on the cost of equity capital.

The results show that broad transparency allows firms to benefit from a lower cost of equity capital. From this perspective, disseminating information about digitalization choices in a signaling theory key represents the signal that companies send to investors.

This study extends the knowledge about the potential of transparency to facilitate access to finance by examining the effect of another type of information, namely, those relating to digitalization choices, on the cost of equity capital.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the financial consequences of the level of human capital (HC) information disclosed by firms through integrated reports. Specifically, this work examines the effect of HC information on the cost of capital and firm value.

A manual content analysis is used to measure the level of HC information contained in integrated reports. A fixed-effects regression model is used to analyse 375 observations (a balanced panel of 125 firms for the period 2017–2019) and test the financial consequences of HC disclosure.

The empirical outcomes indicate that HC disclosure has a significant and negative effect on the cost of capital and a positive impact on firm value. Our results show that companies can reduce investors' perceived firm risk by improving HC disclosure, leading to a lower cost of capital. Moreover, our findings support the notion that increased levels of HC disclosure are linked to firms' improved access to external financial resources, consequently enhancing firm value.

This study is the first contribution to examine the financial consequences of HC disclosure and is one of the first to examine the level of HC information within integrated reports.