Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on financial reporting and disclosure practices: empirical evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract

PurposeTo investigate the consequence of COVID-19 pandemic on the financial reporting and disclosure (FRD) practices, the study has been conducted. Moreover, this paper highlights the significance of FRD practices in any emergency period and its relevance with legitimacy theory in Bangladesh Perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe COVID-19 pandemic has adverse impact on business. Hence, all the business activities have been categorized into five major aspects which are financial factors, business operations, business contracts, business value and stakeholders. These five major activities have been considered as independent variable. By analyzing various policy recommendations and guidelines of global and local accounting bodies, a structured questionnaire was developed in association with related IAS and IFRSs. Then, it was distributed among the accounting professionals of Bangladesh who are currently engaged in financial statement preparation and auditing services. Finally, data was analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothetical relationship between dependent variable and independent variable.FindingsThis study finds that financial factors, business contracts and stakeholders have significant relationship with the financial reporting and disclosure practices during the COVID-19 pandemic period. However, business operation and business value have no significant relationship with financial reporting and disclosure practices.Research limitations/implicationsThis study tries to analyze why and how firms should disclose essential information (both financial and non-financial) to the financial statement users during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study can be used as benchmark to issue a separate policy or standard for reporting any kind of adverse event in the financial reporting and disclosure practices.Originality/valueTo our best knowledge, we believe that this is first kind of study undertaken to investigate the consequence of COVID-19 pandemic on the FRD practices in the context of Bangladesh. This study is kind of exploratory in nature. Hence, future studies can explore industry-based financial reporting and disclosure practice in any pandemic period.