Reporting of Intellectual Capital from the Romanian Companies' Perspective

When it comes to reporting, openness and transparency are two key underpinning concepts that can be summarized but not limited to companies' ability to report available information in a candid, accurate and timely manner. Reporting in this context refers not only to statutory and listing disclosures required by capital markets, but it covers general reports, press releases, sustainability reports, general corporate social responsibility reports and any other voluntary information. Intellectual capital reports or any reports disclosing information about intellectual capital or human capital are for the time being voluntary reports. Companies always consider the cost benefit balance when it comes to voluntary reports and intellectual capital reports are still very costly to a regrettably large number of companies in terms of time spent, lack of experience, reluctance to disclose, etc. Nevertheless, in the name of transparency, we expect that listed companies report within annual reports information about intellectual capital. Having this expectation as a starting point, it challenged us to the current research paper. After an in-depth literature review of the papers written in area of intellectual capital disclosure and after explaining our understanding of the controversial concepts that we use throughout this study, we carry out a content analysis of annual reports published by Romanian companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE). The primary objective of this research is to assess the extent to which these companies disclose information in respect of the intellectual capital as compared to the guidelines proposed by Global Reporting Initiative. This assessment is performed from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. We believe that this study contributes to the intellectual capital disclosure literature and represents empirical evidence of the extent of the quality and quantity to which, Romanian companies listed on the BSE, disclose intellectual capital information within their annual reports. Last but not least, this study raises new research questions, begs for future studies and provides a relevant basis for comparison for both existing and coming studies carried out in the same field but for different countries.