Researchers have long been interested in whether the classification of various items on the balance sheet matters to investors. This paper provides evidence on whether reporting non-controlling interests (NCI) as equity or as non-equity matters in terms of value relevance. We use a sample of German firms that voluntary adopted International Financial Reporting Standards early. This adoption required them to change their reporting of NCI from the non-equity to the equity portion of the balance sheet. After conducting sensitivity tests for self-selection bias and controlling for weight of NCI, firm size and leverage, our results suggest that NCI are priced by the market in the same manner irrespectively of being reported as equity or non-equity. This finding reinforces the notion that equity markets are efficient in their processing of information, regardless of the classification by standard setters. JEL Classification: M41-Accounting.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: to provide evidence on geographic and firm-level characteristics within organizations using integrated reporting (<IR>) methodology to communicate their business model to stakeholders; and to shed light on the contend of integrated reports of organizations that have been recognized as leading practice by a reputable award process or through benchmarking.
Design/methodology/approach
Secondary analysis of data (descriptive and inferential statistics) is used for a sample of 224 organizations (79 classified as <IR> Reference Reporters and 145 as <IR> Regular Reporters) across 26 countries (2011 to mid-2015). Content analysis is used for <IR> Reference Reporters.
Findings
Evidence for the first objective suggests that compared with <IR> Regular Reporters, the majority of the <IR> Reference Reporters are from Europe, are larger, have a higher market value, are more profitable and are less leveraged. Evidence for the second objective reveals that the guiding principles, fundamental concepts and content elements of the most recent integrated report published by each <IR> Reference Reporter (leading practice) seem less than expected.
Research limitations/implications
<IR> Examples Database does not cover all of the organizations reporting according to the <IR> framework. Content analysis can be biased by authors’ interpretations.
Practical implications
Potential benefit both to researchers and to those involved in the reporting of financial and non-financial information using the <IR> tool.
Originality/value
The originality of the paper is as follows: it contributes to the international debate on the evolution from sustainability to <IR>, provides evidence on geographies and firm-level characteristics of organizations using <IR> to better communicate and provides the most prominent information disclosed by Reference Reporters.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide the first assessment of the integrated reporting (IR) stream using a broad sample of publications separated into research scopes (accounting and non-core accounting journals) and using a longitudinal perspective. This study proposes to identify its main contributors, evidencing both individual and collaborative work.
Design/methodology/approach
Bibliometric tools supported by a milestone approach to IR history were used to address the first two research questions on the growth of this stream per scope. Density maps on keyword co-occurrence provided insights into the third question aimed at assessing differences in the scopes’ research topics. The number of publications, citation-based metrics and network analysis based on co-authorship allowed us to answer the last question regarding the top contributors.
Findings
The results endorse the acknowledged interest in this stream, exposing its incredible growth, which already amounts to over 1,000 different scholars, 200 distinguished journals and 7,600 citations across 540 peer-reviewed publications. With the accounting scope leading on citation frequency and the non-core accounting having more publications, an almost picture-perfect circle in a pooled density map supports the field’s advocated interdisciplinarity with its distinctive contributions. Finally, the cluster analysis revealed that 140 publications belong exclusively to 10 research clusters that contribute to more than half of the total citation count.
Originality/value
This rich analysis combines visualizing techniques with in-depth bibliometrics to provide the first far-reaching collation of publications on IR to offer a complementary view on this dynamic interdisciplinary stream.
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