Non-financial reporting as a challenge for the contemporary accounting system

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse and evaluate the degree of development of non-financial information reporting in Poland with particular consideration given to the role of accounting as a generator of information in this scope. The following considerations serve as an input to the debate and, as a result, the author formulated the research hypothesis as follows: non-financial information reporting in Poland is in its early phase of development. In order to evaluate the actual state, the author carried out the quantitative analysis of nonfinancial reports published by Polish economic units in the international register kept by the GRI as well as in the Polish Register of Reports kept by CRSinfo. It appears from the study that obtaining comprehensive financial, non-financial, quantifiable and descriptive information requires moving away from treating accounting as a closed system and requires its development. In this context, social accounting, being a broader field in accounting, is getting more and more popular. Research methods applied in the study: literature studies, legal regulations analysis as well as the method of deductive reasoning and synthesis.

How to make corporate social disclosures comparable?

“…The usefulness of Directive 2014/95/EU in its current form was questioned in many research studies (e.g. Biondi et al, 2020;De Luca, 2020) -on the one hand, it is a key legislative act that represents an important step towards standardization of sustainability reporting and formalizing the transparency requirements, but on the other hand, it still does not ensure comparability of sustainability disclosures revealed by companies (Venturelli et al, 2017;Doni et al, 2020;Krasodomska and Zarzycka, 2020;Czaja-Cieszyńska, 2018).…”