Title: Comparing intellectual capital disclosure among the Greek listed companies: does sector and capitalisation matter?

Authors: Michail Nerantzidis

Addresses: Section of Taxation and Auditing, Department of Public Administration, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the intellectual capital disclosure (hereafter: ICD) among the Greek listed companies and compare this level of disclosure among companies of different sector and capitalisation. For this reason, a content analysis of 49 companies' annual reports was firstly conducted, in order to examine the ICDs frequency per element (by sector and capitalisation). Then, a hypothesis analysis was used to compare the level of ICD among companies of different sector and capitalisation. The findings showed that the most reported accounting category was external (or relational) capital and the second most reported was internal (or structural) capital. Furthermore, this study revealed that the most knowledge-based or the biggest companies have the most ICDs frequency. However, a great effort has been put in, in order to increase transparency, in the way that content analysis is conducted, so that a 'real' benefit on future studies can exist.

Keywords: intellectual capital disclosure; ICD; Greece; company sectors; capitalisation; content analysis; annual reports; accounting categories.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2015.068985

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2015 Vol.12 No.2, pp.146 - 169

Received: 26 Apr 2014
Accepted: 16 Dec 2014

Published online: 06 May 2015 *

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