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This paper provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date (1997–2016) review of the archival empirical risk-reporting literature. The reviewed papers are classified into two principal themes: the incentives for and/or informativeness of risk reporting. Our review demonstrates areas of significant divergence in the literature specifically: mandatory versus voluntary risk reporting, manual versus automated content analysis, within-country versus cross-country variations in risk reporting, and risk reporting in financial versus non-financial firms. Our paper identifies a number of issues which require further research. In particular we draw attention to two: first, a lack of clarity and consistency around the conceptualization of risk; and second, the potential costs and benefits of standard-setters’ involvement.

This paper seeks to investigate to what extent (and why) CSR reporting in developing countries reflect instrumental and/or “political CSR” motivations and the types of organisational legitimacy sought in these circumstances.

We adopt a theoretical framework based on neo-institutional theory, “political CSR” framework and types of organisational legitimacy. This interpretive research is set in the Egyptian context post-2011 revolution. We first carry out a content analysis of web disclosures for 40 banks in 2013 and 2016 to ascertain the nature of CSR activities and any changes over time. Second, we draw on 21 interviews to tease out the implications of the change in societal expectations due to the revolution and to deepen our understanding of the organisational motivations underlying CSR reporting.

Following the 2011 revolution, the banks’ CSR reporting practices have gradually shifted from a largely instrumental “business-case” perspective towards a more substantive recognition of a wider set of societal challenges consistent with a political CSR perspective. Overall, the maintaining/gaining of legitimacy is gradually bound to the communication of accounts about the multi-faceted socially valued consequences or structures performed by banks. Our interview data shows that participants reflected on the legitimation challenges brought by the revolution and the limits of transactional strategies involving traditional constituents, with a preference for pursuing consequential and structural forms of moral legitimacy.

This study demonstrates a constructive shift by businesses towards engaging with the new social rules in response to sociopolitical changes and the need to achieve moral legitimacy. Hence, policymakers and stakeholders could consider engaging with different economic sectors to foster more transparent, accountable, and impactful CSR practices.

We highlight the implications of Scherer and Palazzo’s political CSR approach for accountability and CSR reporting. CSR reporting in some developing countries has typically been seen as peripheral or a symbolic exercise primarily concerned with placating stakeholders and/or promoting shareholders’ interests. We suggest that researchers need to be instead attuned to the possibility of a blend of instrumental and normative motivations.

This editorial aims to provide an overview of the four papers included in this special issue. It discusses the development of voluntary disclosure research and its potential future directions.

The editorial adopts a review approach, identifying key issues and provides a context for future research.

The editorial highlights some of the difficulties with research into voluntary disclosure, calls for further reflection and suggests factors to consider in future research in this area.

The editorial provides a review of current issues in disclosure research and reviews these papers which demonstrate a particular approach to research that is relevant to both practitioners and academics.

This paper examines risk information disclosed by UK public companies within their annual reports. The types of risk information disclosed are analyzed and the authors examine whether a relationship exists between company size or level of risk and risk disclosure totals.

No prior empirical studies of the risk information content of annual reports have been undertaken. To analyze the risk disclosures, a sentence‐based approach was used.

Overall the results indicate that the companies sampled are not providing a complete picture of the risks they face. There is minimal disclosure of quantified risk information and a significant proportion of risk disclosures consist of generalized statements of risk policy. More usefully directors are releasing forward‐looking risk information. The principal driver affecting levels of risk disclosure is company size and not company risk level.

Further risk disclosure research is possible in many different areas. Cross‐country studies could be undertaken as could risk disclosure studies within specific industry sectors. A limitation of the sentence‐based methodology is that it does not measure the quality of the risk disclosures and therefore different methods may be adopted in future studies.

Professional bodies attempting to improve risk reporting have not convinced directors of the benefits associated with greater voluntary risk disclosure. In the UK this has led to a mandatory requirement to provide better risk information being forced upon companies through legislation enacted by the UK government.

The area this paper researches is of particular importance given recent accounting scandals that have occurred. No previous risk disclosure studies have been published, therefore this exploration is also valuable in linking risk management and transparency.

This paper seeks to address a gap in the literature in that it explores community disclosures in annual reports examining annual reports for 5 UK FTSE 100 sectors between, 1974 and 2000.

The sample was bifurcated into types – those with higher public profile and those with lower public profile based on a measure of “proximity to end user”. Two approaches were adopted in the paper: longitudinal volumetric word count mean and frequency of disclosure by company.

The two approaches demonstrated that community disclosure was positively associated with public profile. The findings are consistent with reporting behaviour found in other categories of voluntary disclosure, where disclosure has been found to be associated with the presumed information demands of specific stakeholders. Additionally the research supported a legitimacy theory‐based explanation of cross‐sectional variability in community disclosures. Illustrative disclosures from a number of companies are also presented in the paper.

Further areas of research are suggested by these findings. In addition to articulating the potential value of examining community disclosure patterns in other contexts (e.g. in other sectors and other national situations), and in other media (e.g. internet studies), the findings in this study suggest that there may be value in exploring the ways in which voluntary disclosure responds to other external structural variables.

The contribution of this paper has been to show that a hitherto less‐analysed category of voluntary social disclosure (community disclosure) is cross‐sectionally responsive to the structural vulnerability of companies to issues associated with “general” social concern.

This tribute is in memory of Professor David Campbell, who sadly died in June 2017. David was an influential and inspirational global researcher in accounting. This tribute summarises his significant contribution to the discipline as well as providing insights into his career at Northumbria and Newcastle Universities.

The tribute provides a review of David’s research and his key publications in accounting. Specifically, his invaluable contribution to social and environmental accounting disclosure and related corporate accountability is highlighted.

David was a hugely popular personality in the accounting research discipline and he will be missed by colleagues and friends across the world. His insightful research, thinking and engaging personality led to enduring friendships and significant collaborative research publications. David was a great supporter of international conferences at which he actively encouraged and nurtured research by others around him.

David leaves a legacy of influential publications in accounting that have shaped the discipline and have helped develop solid foundations for rigorous future research in the area.

David’s research had significant practical implications with regard to the usefulness of voluntary accounting disclosure narrative to stakeholders. As well as highlighting the policy implications in relation to corporate disclosure, his work contributed to the debate concerning the accountability and ethics of organisations. Beyond research, David was also influential in professional accounting education as ACCA chief examiner for “Governance, Risk and Ethics”, embedding these issues into the curriculum.

The tribute highlights David’s global collaborative research friendships and their fruitful publications. He will be a huge loss to those people and others who knew him closely, as well as to the accounting community in general.

David enhanced the discipline as we know it and through his work will continue to shape the discipline in years to come. David had a love for research and for others whom he knew through it.

The purpose of this paper is to explore who uses narrative reporting information contained within online corporate annual reports and assess the relative use of different types of narrative information.

Web server logs were used to analyse over one million instances where information is successfully delivered to users of the corporate web sites of 15 FTSE 350 companies.

The most frequent users of the online annual report are, respectively, private individuals, those registered under internet service providers, employees and professional investors/creditors. The results suggest that those with greater experience and expertise in preparing and using financial accounts adopt different information preferences with respect to the online annual report. Although experienced users such as professional investors, creditors and accounting firms use the annual report to download predominantly detailed financial accounting data, the widespread availability and accessibility of the online annual report allows narratives to provide a source of general company information for employees and a wider stakeholder audience.

The paper presents the first large‐scale survey into the use and users of online annual reports.

The purpose of this paper is to address “the existing literature gap on the information content of derivatives reporting”. Prior work finds failings in compliance with mandatory reporting requirements in respect of financial instruments and derivative financial instruments. Instead of identifying weaknesses in compliance the paper identifies where firms over‐comply or in other words, where firms voluntarily disclose more than they are required and whether this is incremental information or serves another purpose.

The paper reviews the financial instruments disclosures of the FTSE 100 non‐financial IFRS 7 compliant firms. Based on these results, on a case‐by‐case basis the authors address potential causes and rationale for this extra disclosure.

Prior research suggests that it is counter intuitive to argue that firms will provide voluntary disclosure in a mandatory reporting environment because information of this sort tends to be proprietary and competition sensitive, not to mention costly to prepare. However, it is found that firms have voluntarily published information in excess of the requirements and the authors suggest that this extra detail is most commonly associated with a legitimation strategy.

In spite of the importance of derivatives usage and management in addition to the increased and often complex reporting requirements, the authors are not aware of any previous study of this type.