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This study gave rise to four policy recommendations. First, firms are encouraged to use both narrative and visual forms of disclosure to complement one another in disclosing intellectual capital resource items on websites. Secondly, it is important to conduct an awareness program about intellectual capital disclosure on websites so that small firms become aware of the positive impact such disclosure can have in enhancing corporate reputation. Thirdly, firms should prepare guidelines for intellectual capital disclosure on websites so that they can favour a best practice model. Finally, fostering a dialogue between stakeholders and the accounting regulators can help to streamline intellectual capital disclosure for more value relevant, forward-looking information. These points are elaborated in the following.

This chapter expands the existing literature by examining voluntary intellectual capital disclosure provided by listed Romanian companies in 2010 annual reports.

The chapter aims to determine the extent of intellectual capital disclosure within Romanian listed companies. Within this chapter we have conducted a content analysis using the annual reports of 71 companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE), main market (Bursa de Valori Bucure_ti – BVB). The intellectual capital framework developed by Sveiby in 1997 was used in our analysis and the frequency of disclosure was used as the measure of disclosure.

The results show that the key components of intellectual capital are relatively poorly reported by Romanian listed companies. The main areas of intellectual capital disclosure focus firstly on structural capital, then on relational capital and at the end on human capital.

The existence of information related to intellectual capital is used as the measure of the level of intellectual capital disclosure. Also, our exploratory investigation concerns only one fiscal year.

According to the authors’ knowledge the present chapter is a pioneering study developed at national level which highlights the intellectual capital disclosure practices of Romanian listed companies by examining their 2010 annual reports. The chapter highlights new insights of the level of intellectual capital disclosure within companies which operates in small capital market.

This chapter describes the research methods used in this study. Section 4.2 introduces the content analysis of company-sponsored websites. Section 4.3 outlines the intellectual capital disclosure signals – narrative, visual and numerical – and their measurement. Section 4.4 introduces the recording of quantified intellectual capital disclosure signals within the coding framework. Section 4.5 describes issues relating to the validity and reliability of content analysis in measuring intellectual capital disclosure signals as well as overcoming any problems. Section 4.6 outlines the sample size and reasons some firms were excluded from the study. Section 4.7 explains the survey questionnaire administered in this study. Section 4.8 describes focused interviews conducted in this study. Section 4.9 provides a summary of the chapter.

This chapter provides a review of the literature relating to intellectual capital and firm performance in the context of corporate reputation. Section 2.2 outlines the definitions of intellectual capital and how they differ from the definitions offered for intangibles by accounting regulators. Section 2.3 reviews the categorisation of intellectual capital and looks at two major models of categorisation. Section 2.4 examines the definition of intellectual capital disclosure. Section 2.5 examines firm performance from the viewpoint of firm reputation for value-relevant disclosure. Section 2.6 discusses firm reputation in the context of intellectual capital disclosure. Section 2.7 provides a summary of the chapter.

This chapter describes signalling theory, which is used to interpret the findings. Section 3.2 outlines the implications of signalling theory as a way of correcting market failure through voluntary disclosure. Section 3.3 discusses theoretical constructs, outlining independent variables, interaction of independent variables and mediating variables. Section 3.4 outlines the empirical model used for linear regression to investigate disclosure signals and their association with corporate reputation. Section 3.5 outlines the empirical model developed to investigate the directors' perception of the effectiveness of intellectual capital value drivers in enhancing corporate reputation. It also outlines the approach adopted to compare disparity between intellectual capital disclosure and directors' perception of the ability of drivers to enhance intellectual capital value of corporate reputation. Section 3.6 provides a summary for the chapter.

This chapter provides a brief overview of the contents of this report and evaluates its contribution to the literature. Section 9.2 briefly summarises the motivation behind the study and the scope of the research. Section 9.3 briefly summarises the data, methodology and results. Section 9.4 outlines policy recommendations. Section 9.5 describes the limitations of this study. The last section suggests possible directions for future research that arise from the issues dealt with in this study.

The main purpose of this chapter is to investigate the association between intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) level and two potential explanatory determinants: industry type and company size.

Twenty-one annual reports of Romanian public companies represented the sample companies. For each company, an ICD index was constructed based on an intellectual capital (IC) framework composed of 33 IC items. The results obtained for ICD Index are then used for statistical testing: descriptive statistics, T test, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis.

Industry type by its own does not seem to influence ICD level and company size by its own does not influence the IC disclosure. However, the combination of the two variables significantly combines together to predict ICD.

A specified list of IC items may not provide the whole picture of ICD practices. Future research could consider interviewing managers about their disclosure rationale. A larger sample could help to further improve the extrapolation of the results. Furthermore, this study challenges researchers to extend the area of analysis by considering the relation between ICD and other possible determinants. Last but not least, a longitudinal study could provide more insights.

The results obtained represent a basis for comparison with those obtained by other studies carried out in other developing countries. Furthermore, they can be used in meta-analysis.

This chapter is one of the first investigating ICD in the case of Romanian companies. Accordingly, our chapter contributes to the ICD literature by providing new empirical evidence on the determinants of ICD in a developing country context.

Voluntary non-financial reporting aims at fairly reporting a firm’s non-financial performance. In particular, integrated reporting (IR) displays in a single report the contribution of different forms of capital to the firm’s value creation. Drawing on both legitimacy and voluntary disclosure theory, the main purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance affects the content and semantic properties of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) found in IRs.

To test theoretical hypotheses, content and tone analysis is used to assess the disclosure strategy associated with ICD, whereas a regression analysis tests the variation in semantic properties of ICD according to firms’ ESG performance. A total of 79 reports by European listed firms from 2011 to 2016 were downloaded via the Integrated Reporting Emerging Practice Examples Database and analyzed.

Results show that ESG performance contributing more to optimistic ICD tone is governance, although in mixed ways. Integrating vision and strategy positively contributes to ICD tone, whereas information on poor treatment of shareholders’ rights tends to be manipulated and associated with an optimistic tone of the ICD. Moreover, eco-efficient product innovation and healthy and safe job conditions play a positive role in enhancing optimistic ICD tone.

This chapter contributes to the current literature on voluntary disclosure by introducing new evidence on the disclosure strategy in IR. By analyzing the effect of the single dimensions of ESG performance on ICD tone, this study extends respectively ESG literature.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze whether information asymmetry (ASYM) plays a mediating role in the relationship between corporate disclosure and cost of equity capital (COEC) in emerging markets such as Indonesia.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This study is a quantitative study using secondary data obtained from listed manufacturing firms from 2015 to 2017. Purposive sampling was used to select 105 firms. The design of this study was causality research, and the analysis was performed through ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and path analysis.

Findings: The results show that the level of disclosure for corporate social responsibility (CSR), intellectual capital, and enterprise risk management (ERM) reduces the COEC by suppressing ASYM. This finding confirms the argument that managers can reduce their companies’ COEC by reducing ASYM through increased disclosure. These results are controlled by earnings quality (EQL) because that is most relevant to the COEC, as well as corporate size, leverage, and differences in institutional factors.

Originality/Value: This research is based on the central assumption that disclosure enhances the level of information while EQL remains the focus for investors. This research is also the first to study CSR disclosure, intellectual capital disclosure, and ERM disclosure together as a proxy for disclosure. The findings confirm that managers can reduce their companies’ agency conflict by increasing their level of disclosure. Managers can also reduce the COEC by reducing ASYM through increased disclosure. This also implies that increasing the level of disclosure will be effective in reducing the COEC for companies in emerging markets, such as Indonesia.

This chapter introduces intellectual capital and intellectual capital disclosure and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters of the study. Section 1.2 outlines the relevance of intellectual capital in the present context. Section 1.3 explains the motivation for undertaking a study investigating revenue growth reputation and intellectual capital. Section 1.4 explains the aims and objectives of this study. The last section provides an introduction to and overview of the following chapters.