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1 – 9 of 9Michela Cordazzo and Philip G.M.C. Vergauwen
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure on the UK biotechnology initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses. The study is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure on the UK biotechnology initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses. The study is based on companies going public on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the London Alternative Investment Market (AIM) over the period 2005‐2007.
Design/methodology/approach
The extent of IC disclosure is collected and measured by using the IC disclosure index and the framework proposed by Bukh et al. The differences in the level of IC disclosure are analysed by modelling some firm‐specific determinants such as size, maturity, age and independence of the board.
Findings
It is shown that primary listing companies on the LSE disclose more IC information than those on the London AIM. Maturity and independence of the board are associated with IC disclosure, while size and age are not related, showing the importance of corporate communication as a signal of credibility to possible investors at IPO stage.
Originality/value
The main contribution of the paper is to analyse IC disclosure in the UK biotechnology IPO prospectuses. Previous literature does not focus on this reporting genre as an important corporate communication tool, as most research investigates IC disclosure only in annual reports and country regulation settings.
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Philip Vergauwen, Laury Bollen and Els Oirbans
This paper aims to study the relationship between intellectual capital disclosures (ICDs) and the relative importance of intangible assets as company value drivers.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the relationship between intellectual capital disclosures (ICDs) and the relative importance of intangible assets as company value drivers.
Design/methodology/approach
Annual reports of Swedish, British and Danish firms are analysed to measure the extent of ICD. The level of intellectual capital (IC) in firms, measured with proxies for the categories of human, structural and relational capital.
Findings
As to the components of IC, the empirical results indicate that there is a strong significant positive relationship between (the level of) structural capital possession of a firm and the firm's ICD.
Practical implications
This suggests that firms with a relatively high level of structural capital, disclose more information on IC in the annual report. The study found no such significant association between human and relational capital in firms and ICD regarding these items. Firms might have a transparency drawback in addressing these issues in the reports when these IC categories are relatively of greater importance for firms.
Originality/value
The paper provides evidence for the argument that firms focus their ICD on those IC elements that are most relevant for the company's value creation process.
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Philip G.M.C. Vergauwen and Frits J.C. van Alem
This paper replicates and extends the Bontis research on intellectual capital (IC) disclosures in Canadian companies and also elaborates on the Beaulieu et al. research on…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper replicates and extends the Bontis research on intellectual capital (IC) disclosures in Canadian companies and also elaborates on the Beaulieu et al. research on disclosures by Swedish firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper studies IC disclosures by French CAC‐40, Dutch AEX and German XETRA‐DAX publicly‐listed companies for the years 2000 and 2001. The paper also discusses country‐specific arguments in favour of and against voluntary disclosure by such companies and searches both the annual reports and financial statements for IC hits.
Findings
Applying the Gray‐scale to categorise countries, the paper finds not only that voluntary IC disclosure significantly differs between these countries, but also that this difference can be explained by country‐specific regulation and auditor conservatism.
Research limitations/implications
The paper only studies Dutch, French and German IC disclosures in annual reports and financial statements. These three countries are European Union member states but “differ” significantly from one another. The differences discussed in this paper, however, are by no means exhaustive, nor do they picture the “European situation” in full.
Practical implications
The paper recognises that the intangible nature of IC creates tension with current country‐specific legislation and strongly calls for convergence of applicable accounting standards and practices because of the increasing importance of IC and because of the improvement of corporate governance and policy making.
Originality/value
The paper not only extends (or fine‐tunes) previous research, but also links with the literature that discusses the consequences of country‐specific characteristics for accounting standards and practices.
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Alexander Brüggen, Philip Vergauwen and Mai Dao
The purpose of this paper is to examine determinants of the decision to disclose intellectual capital in annual reports.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine determinants of the decision to disclose intellectual capital in annual reports.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper derives theoretical predictions from the previous literature and bases the study on archival data with a sample of 125 publicly listed Australian firms. The authors perform a content analysis of annual reports and complement the data with quantitative data from the sample firms.
Findings
The paper finds that industry type plays a key role as a determinant for the disclosure of intellectual property in annual reports. In addition, firm size is another determinant for intellectual disclosure of firms. In contrast with earlier studies and theoretical predictions of voluntary disclosure, however, the paper does not find any relationship between the level of information asymmetry and intellectual capital disclosure.
Research limitations/implications
One limitation refers to the content analysis. Analyzing the annual reports based on the specified list of IC‐related terms may not provide the whole picture as well as the IC disclosure practices. Despite these limitations, the study helps to understand better in general what kind of firms actually disclose information on intellectual capital.
Originality/value
In contrast with earlier studies the study uses significantly more observations, which makes the results more reliable and generalizable. Of further significance is the finding that information asymmetry – one of the main problems between investors and firms – is not driving the decision of firms to disclose information on intellectual capital.
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Laury Bollen, Philip Vergauwen and Stephanie Schnieders
The purpose of this paper is to link empirically the value of intellectual capital and intellectual property to firm performance.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to link empirically the value of intellectual capital and intellectual property to firm performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data from managers in the (German) pharmaceutical industry is used to conduct a regression analysis focusing on the correlation between human, structural and relational capital, intellectual property and firm performance.
Findings
The results of the study show that including intellectual property in models linking intellectual capital to firm performance enhances the statistical validity of such models and their relevance for management.
Practical implications
Intellectual capital is an important source of an organization's economic wealth and is therefore to be taken into serious consideration when formulating the firm's strategy. This strategy formulation process can be enhanced by fully integrating intellectual property and intellectual capital into management models, as shown in this paper.
Originality/value
This empirical paper builds on and extends the Bontis research on the relationship between intellectual capital and firm performance. Contrary to Bontis the authors include intellectual property into the intellectual capital framework and focus on the role of intellectual property in the relationship between intellectual capital and firm performance.
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This paper aims to study corporate response to intellectual capital and social responsibility disclosure recommendations regarding employees. Such an analysis would reveal which…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study corporate response to intellectual capital and social responsibility disclosure recommendations regarding employees. Such an analysis would reveal which forms of corporate interest induce a company to disclose: reflecting the firm’s value to satisfy priority shareholders’ needs of information or improving the corporate social image to meet the demands of stakeholders other than capital providers.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper quantify the extent to which 105 Spanish listed companies present in their annual reports information about employees. Human resource disclosure attending the recommendations of social disclosure and information linked to value creation following the information included in the intellectual capital models are distinguished. A content analysis of 105 companies’ annual reports was conducted. Once the information was quantified, the author considers which theoretical arguments of voluntary/social disclosure motive that a company follows have different recommendations about human resource disclosure.
Findings
The findings reflect the existent recommendations are not enough for companies to disclose about human resources. Spanish companies pay more attention to social issues about employee than to others human capital aspects usually integrated in the intellectual capital.
Research limitations/implications
It would be interesting to extend the period of analysis to study the trend in human resource disclosure and to use an alternative measure of disclosing as the information quality.
Practical implications
These findings concluded that the fundamental aim of Spanish companies is to reflect social behaviour regarding employees. Less important appears to be to inform about business capacity, through human element, for creating value. The necessity of explicit disclosure requirements to Spanish companies’ disclosure on human resources is also detected.
Originality/value
Some studies have been carried out to analyse disclosure on intellectual capital or on social issues but not since a broad perspective. Furthermore, these studies have not been done in Spain. The author may confirm that the influence of some stakeholders in this country is conditioning corporate disclosure.
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Giacomo Boesso and Kamalesh Kumar
The purpose of this paper is to examine what factors in addition to the needs of financial markets drive the voluntary disclosure practices of companies in Italy and in the United…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine what factors in addition to the needs of financial markets drive the voluntary disclosure practices of companies in Italy and in the United States.
Design/methodology/approach
Information provided in the management discussion and analysis section of the annual reports of 72 companies was content analyzed to determine the volume and the quality of voluntary disclosures.
Findings
Results show that in addition to investors' information needs, factors such as company emphasis on stakeholder management, relevance of intangible asset, and market complexity affect both the volume as well as the quality of voluntary disclosures.
Research limitations/implications
The study is based on the voluntary disclosures made in a single year, which makes this study a snapshot. The size of the sample used in this study is relatively small. Future research aimed at examining country differences in voluntary disclosures made by companies needs to examine the business contexts in a comprehensive manner, so that differences observed across country boundaries can be adequately explained.
Practical implications
The comprehensive framework developed in this study for organizing and evaluating voluntary disclosures is an initial step in the direction of examining voluntary disclosure from the stakeholder perspective.
Originality/value
While results of this study confirm the findings of previous researchers, they also identify new drivers of voluntary disclosures and give some evidence about the similarity and differences in these factors across country contexts.
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Accurate documentation of damaged or destroyed historical buildings to protect cultural heritage has been on the agenda of architecture for many years. In that sense, this study…
Abstract
Purpose
Accurate documentation of damaged or destroyed historical buildings to protect cultural heritage has been on the agenda of architecture for many years. In that sense, this study uses machine learning (ML) to predict missing/damaged parts of historical buildings within the scope of early ottoman tombs.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs), a subset of ML to predict missing/damaged parts of historical buildings within the scope of early Ottoman tombs. This paper discusses that using GAN as a ML framework is an efficient method for estimating missing/damaged parts of historical buildings. The study uses the plan drawings of nearly 200 historical buildings, which were prepared one by one as a data set for the ML process.
Findings
The study contributes to the field by (1) generating a mixed methodological framework, (2) validating the effectiveness of the proposed framework in the restitution of historical buildings and (3) assessing the contextual dependency of the generated data. The paper provides insights into how ML can be used in the conservation of architectural heritage. It suggests that using a comprehensive data set in the process can be highly effective in getting successful results. The findings of the research will be a reference for new studies on the conservation of cultural heritage with ML and will make a significant contribution to the literature.
Research limitations/implications
A reliable outcome has been obtained concerning the interpretation of documented data and the generation of missing data at the macro level. The framework is remarkably effective when it comes to the identification and re-generation of missing architectural components like walls, domes, windows, doors, etc. on a macro level without details. On the other hand, the proposed methodological framework is not ready for advanced steps of restitution since every case of architectural heritage is very detailed and unique. Therefore, the proposed framework for re-generation of missing components of heritage buildings is limited by the basic geometrical form which means the architectural details of the mentioned components including ornaments, materials, identification of construction layers, etc. are not covered.
Originality/value
The generic literature as to ML models used in architecture mostly constitutes design exploration and floor plan/urban layout generation. More specific studies in the conservation of architectural heritage by using ML mostly focus on architectural component recognition over 3D point cloud data (1) or superficial damage detection of heritage buildings (2). However, we propose a mixed methodological framework for the interpretation of documented architectural data and the regeneration of missing parts of historical buildings. In addition, the methodology and the results of this paper constitute a guide for further research on ML and consequently contribute to architects in the early phases of restitution.
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