Title: Voluntary human capital disclosure in French annual reports

Authors: Inès Kateb

Addresses: Higher Institute of Accountancy, and Entrepreneurial Administration, University of Manouba, 03 Avenue, El Ghazala, El Ghazala City, CP 2083, Tunisia

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse the characteristics and the determinants of voluntary human capital disclosure (HCD) in France using content analysis for 275 annual reports of 55 companies observed over the period 2006-2010. The study shows that firms provide more information on professional skills with emphasis on the narrative and photo forms. In addition, it confirms that the quantity of HCD increases with the firms age and the weight of activated goodwill. Besides, firm's that are less valued by the stock market disclose more on human resources. We found that belonging to high-tech sector discourages managers to disclose. However, variables measuring ownership structure, size, leverage, listing status and competitive pressure seem to be insignificant. The findings confirm that voluntary HCD is the result of a trade-off between the benefits of disclosing non financial information and the costs engendered by non-mandatory disclosure, especially when firm operates in a high-tech sector.

Keywords: intellectual capital; human capital disclosure; voluntary disclosure; determinants; annual reports; France; high-tech industry; high technology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2015.072196

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2015 Vol.12 No.4, pp.323 - 341

Received: 24 Jan 2015
Accepted: 23 Mar 2015

Published online: 03 Oct 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article