Intellectual Capital Disclosures: The effect of mandatory Integrated Reporting

Purpose – The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how mandatory obligation to follow the International <IR> Framework while producing the corporate reports influence the intellectual capital disclosures in the reports. Research design – The study uses a disclosure scoreboard to score a selected sample of annual reports depending on whether it disclose intellectual capital information or not. The sample consists of companies listed in South Africa were it is mandatory to follow the integrated reporting framework and companies listen in Sweden where it is not mandatory to produce an integrated report. Empirical results and conclusion – The results of this thesis indicates that the mandatory use of the International <IR> Framework have an impact on the amount of intellectual capital disclosures. Further it concludes that higher level of compliance with the framework further increases the intellectual capital disclosure. Contribution – This study has been an early step towards concluding whether the use of integrated reporting has any effect on the amount of intellectual capital information disclosed in companies’ annual report.

Strategic Information Disclosure through Integrated Reporting : A study on OMXS30-listed companies’ compliance with the <IR> Framework content element Strategy and Resource Allocation

Background and problem – As a result of financial crises and the realization of a broader stakeholder network, recent decades have seen an increase in stakeholder demand for non- financial information in corporate reporting. This has led to a situation of information overload where separate financial and sustainability reports have developed in length and complexity interdependent of each other. Integrated reporting has been presented as a solution to this problematic situation. The question is whether the corporate world believe this to be the solution and if the development of corporate reporting is heading in this direction. Purpose - This thesis aims to examine and assess to what extent companies listed on the OMX Stockholm 30 (OMXS30), as per 2016-02-28, comply with the Strategic content element of the <IR> Framework and how this disclosure has developed since the framework’s pilot project and official release by using a self-constructed disclosure index based on its specific items. Methodology – The purpose was fulfilled through an analysis of 104 annual reports comprising 26 companies during the period of 2011-2014. The annual reports were assessed using a self-constructed disclosure index based on the <IR> Framework content element Strategy and Resource Allocation, where one point was given for each disclosed item. Analysis and conclusions – The study found that the OMXS30-listed companies to a large extent complies with the strategic content element of the <IR> Framework and that this compliance has seen a steady growth throughout the researched time span. There is still room for improvement however with a total average framework compliance of 84% for 2014. Although many items are being reported on, there are indications that companies generally miss out on the core values of Integrated reporting.