Human Capital Disclosure by the Listed Non-Financial Companies of Bangladesh

Abstract

Success of an enterprise very much depends on the composition of human capital of the entity. It is now established that human capital is important for the business organization and it may be disclosed in the annual report of the companies. The specific objectives of the paper are to examine the present status of HC disclosure in corporate annual report of the listed non-financial companies in Bangladesh and to summarize the perceptions of different stakeholders regarding this aspect. Contents analysis has been conducted on annual reports for the year 2008 and 2011 of 82 listed companies in Bangladesh. Perception survey has been conducted on 195 respondents for collecting primary data using five-level Likert scale. Results show that the average disclosure score is below 50 percent and over periods the status is not improving significantly. More than 50 percent companies have achieved less than 40 percent score and there is a large variation in score among the companies’ scores. As disclosure of HC items is a need of the stakeholders, companies should be careful about the matter and concern regulators may take initiative to improve the disclosure status of the companies.