Corporate Reporting of Intellectual Capital: Evidence from UK Companies

Presented to the 30th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association, 25-27 April 2007, Lisbon, Portugal

31 Pages Posted: 16 Mar 2009

See all articles by Jeffrey Unerman

Jeffrey Unerman

Lancaster University Management School, Dept of Accounting & Finance; University of London - School of Management

Ludmila Striukova

SKEMA Business School - Paris la Défense Campus

James Guthrie

Macquarie University - Department of Accounting and Finance; University Of Bologna - Department of Management; Macquarie University, Macquarie Business School

Date Written: April 25, 2007

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation into the intellectual capital reporting (ICR) practices of UK companies in four distinct sectors. It differs from prior ICR studies in that it analyses a wide range of external corporate reporting media for their IC content. It finds major differences between the intellectual capital elements reported in each sector studied, and finds an overall sector effect which is at variance with the expected overall sector effect. The study also finds that a range of corporate media were used for communicating intellectual capital information, and that the annual reports were not a good proxy for the proportion of disclosures across all corporate media.

Keywords: Intellectual capital reporting, UK companies, annual report, content analysis, sector effect, size effect

JEL Classification: M4, M40, M41, M49

Suggested Citation

Unerman, Jeffrey and Striukova, Ludmila and Guthrie, James, Corporate Reporting of Intellectual Capital: Evidence from UK Companies (April 25, 2007). Presented to the 30th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association, 25-27 April 2007, Lisbon, Portugal, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1360537

Jeffrey Unerman

Lancaster University Management School, Dept of Accounting & Finance ( email )

Lancaster LA1 4YX
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lums/people/jeffrey-unerman

University of London - School of Management ( email )

Egham
Surrey, Egham TW20 8DG
United Kingdom
0207-848-4237 (Phone)
0207-848-4237 (Fax)

Ludmila Striukova

SKEMA Business School - Paris la Défense Campus ( email )

Paris la Défense, 92916
France

James Guthrie (Contact Author)

Macquarie University - Department of Accounting and Finance ( email )

Sydney - NSW, 2109
Australia

University Of Bologna - Department of Management ( email )

P.Le Vittoria 15
Forli', 47121
Italy
+39-0543-374-621 (Phone)

Macquarie University, Macquarie Business School ( email )

New South Wales 2109
Australia