Compared to other types of sustainability information, it remains uncommon for companies to report human rights information, and critics argue that when companies do report, they often report opportunistically. This is problematic as non-professional investors may rely on this information when making investment decisions. In this study, we use an experiment to examine how non-professional investors react to human rights information presented in varying formats (i.e., numerical, graphs, qualitative) compared to no reporting. Consistent with our expectations, we find that when information is positive, participants do not react to qualitative information. However, they react positively to numerical and graphical information and seem to use a less critical mindset when processing this type of information, which is associated in the literature with an “aura” of accuracy, objectivity, and neutrality. This is problematic because, similar to what is often the case in reality, participants had no certainty about the accuracy of the information. Further, when information is less positive, participants do not react to numerical or graphical information, but they do react negatively to qualitative information, which is more vague and may be perceived as companies trying to obfuscate less positive performance. We offer a critical discussion of our results.
This year, the 7th edition of the Dutch Accounting Research Conference (DARC) was hosted by the Nijmegen School of Management at Radboud University on Thursday, March 23. In total, over 75 accounting researchers from various Dutch universities were welcomed by Frank Hartmann, chair of the accounting group and head of the Business Economics department. During the day, four keynote speakers presented their research and in a panel discussion, the current state of accounting education was debated. In the evening, participants gathered to network over dinner. This article presents a discussion of the theme of the conference, an outline of the research papers and projects presented during the conference, and a summary of the panel discussion on Accounting Education.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.