Intellectual Capital Disclosure: the Portuguese Case
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Intellectual Capital Disclosure: the Portuguese Case Maria Manuela Martins 1 & Ana Isabel Morais 2 & Helena Isidro 1 & Raul Laureano 1
Received: 31 July 2015 / Accepted: 12 September 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract The purpose of this research is to identify the factors that can explain practices of voluntary disclosure of information on intellectual capital (IC). This is an empirical quantitative study that seeks to examine the influence of certain firm characteristics (firm size, auditor type, ownership concentration, industry, proportion of non-executive directors (NEDs) on the board, chairman/CEO duality and audit committee) on intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) in Portuguese companies. ICD data for this longitudinal study were gathered from the annual reports of 32 Portuguese listed firms over 5 years using content analysis. The results of this study indicate that firm size and industry are explanatory factors of the level of disclosure of information on intellectual capital. One of the limitations of the empirical part of the study derives from choosing the content analysis method because it is subject to the subjectivity of interpretation. Another limitation is the small sample size and the application only to Portugal which reduces the ability to generalize the results to other settings. This study contributes to the IC literature, providing new empirical data covering the analysis of 5 years of disclosure related to corporate governance.
* Maria Manuela Martins [email protected] Ana Isabel Morais [email protected] Helena Isidro [email protected] Raul Laureano [email protected]
1
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL), Av. Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisbon, Portugal
2
ISEG-Lisboa School of Economics & Management, Rua do Quelhas, N.º 6, 1200-781 Lisboa, Portugal
J Knowl Econ
Keywords Intellectual capital . Annual reports . Disclosure . Portugal . Content analysis . Regression analysis
Introduction The transition from the industrial age to the age of knowledge has produced a significant change in the nature, structure and operations of most industries. Presently, organizations focus more on intangible assets than on tangible fixed assets, which together with the globalization of the economy and the development of information technology make knowledge the major source of wealth for organizations. Thus, it becomes important to study what factors encourage organizations to disclose their intellectual capital or not. The motivation for our study is threefold. First, clearer insights into the factors for voluntary disclosure of information on intellectual capital could have important policy implications. For instance, a better understanding of the factors that can explain practices of voluntary disclosure could enable accounting standard-setters and legislators, to better gauge the need for, and likely impact of, regulatory initiatives affecting the financial reporting practices. Second, by focusing on single co
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