Article2015

Intellectual capital disclosure in integrated reporting: an impression management analysis

197 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Intellectual Capital

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Intellectual Capital and Performance Analysis Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Abstract

Purpose – Intellectual capital (IC) is fundamental to understanding how firms create value; however, current IC disclosure (ICD) has been described as inadequate due to the lack of an established IC framework and companies’ actual commitment to report IC information. The International Integrated Reporting Council aims to foster ICD by means of integrated reporting (IR); such a report should display how IC and other forms of capital (e.g. financial) contribute to value creation over time. Drawing on impression management (IM) studies, the purpose of this paper is to assess the quality of ICD offered in IR. Design/methodology/approach – A manual content analysis of all the reports available in the International Integrated Reporting Council web site is run considering both the content of ICD and specific linguistic attributes (evidence, time orientation and tone). In addition, the study tests the relationship between the positive ICD tone and specific characteristics that may incentive managers to manipulate their disclosure to determine whether firms use ICD to manage public perceptions of corporate behaviour. Findings – The results of the content analysis show that majority of ICD is focused on relational capital, with limited quantitative and forward-looking information. Additionally, compared to non-ICD, ICD is significantly more optimistic. Furthermore, the positive tone of ICD is significantly associated with declining performance, bigger size and higher level of intangibles supporting the use of ICD as an IM strategy. Originality/value – The research contributes to the literature offering evidence of the quality of the ICD offered in the IR and demonstrating that ICD offered in the IR is used by managers opportunistically to advance their image.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 197 citations exist upstream.

References

1984Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology.1998Intellectual capital: The new wealth of organizations 1990Impression management: A literature review and two-component model.1997The New Organizational Wealth: Managing and Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets 1996Some determinants of social and environmental disclosures in New Zealand companies 2006The role of environmental disclosures as tools of legitimacy: A research note 2002The relation between environmental performance and environmental disclosure: a research note 1999Exploring the reliability of social and environmental disclosures content analysis

Cited by

2020Intellectual capital disclosure in integrated reports: The effect on firm value 2020Journal of Intellectual Capital: a review of emerging themes and future trends 2015The Free State University integrated reporting: a critical consideration 2015Using content analysis as a research methodology for investigating intellectual capital disclosure 2017Involuntary disclosure of intellectual capital: is it relevant?

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.