Disclosure of Intellectual Capital in Annual Reports: Comparing Evidence from India and Australia
International Journal of Management and Innovation Volume 6 Issue 2 (2014)
25 Pages Posted: 20 Oct 2015
Date Written: October 20, 2015
Abstract
At present, disclosure of IC information across the globe is done by very few leading companies, purely on a "voluntary" basis. Unfortunately, the omission of IC information may adversely influence the quality of decisions made by shareholders, or lead to material misstatements.
This study attempts to provide an insight into the style of IC disclosures done by the top IT-sector corporations from India and Australia. In order to survey the recent IC disclosure practices, we conducted a comparative study of 16 Indian and 20 Australian companies in which the "content analysis" was performed on their annual reports. The results of this study confirmed that IC disclosure by the companies from these countries are found to be low, mostly reported in a narrative form, and IC disclosure had not received any preference from the mentors of these corporations. Knowledge, innovation, information technology, and people are key contributories in the future of any organization and IC is the key driver of market value in the knowledge economy. A major recommendation for corporations is to develop strategic and tactical initiatives that provide for "voluntary" disclosing of IC. These initiatives may initially be used for internal management purposes, but an external stakeholder-focus IC report should be the ultimate long-run goal.
Keywords: Intellectual capital; Voluntary disclosures; Comparing evidence; Information technology corporations; India, Australia
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