Corporate governance and intellectual capital disclosure: evidence from the Scandinavian countries

Abstract

In the modern society intellectual capital (IC) disclosure offers valuable insights on the information transparency between the organisation and its stakeholders. The purpose of the present study is to analyse the determinants of IC disclosure based on the firm data collected from the Scandinavian countries. We have chosen to analyse 123 annual reports in the local language for the period of 2008 to 2012. The annual reports act as one of the best sources of data revealing important information about firms that are beyond the reporting requirements of the accounting regulations. This paper combines the empirical research of IC disclosure with the previous literature to identify its strategic implications on corporate governance. The aim is to examine the relationship between firm size, leverage ratio, information asymmetry and industry-specific factors on the level of IC disclosure. Our results call the potential need for more IC disclosure.