Abstract
In light of the increased demand for greater accountability and legitimacy, new disclosure mechanisms based on non-financial transparency have emerged. Universities cannot be left behind with respect to these social demands. In addition, continuous competition in excellence is driving higher education organizations to exhibit a greater visibility of their results, necessarily incorporating more non-financial aspects to boost stakeholder engagement. The novelty of this work lies in the analysis of the real state of non-financial vs. financial information in both public and private universities and in the exploration of their influence on stakeholder online engagement. To this end, a content analysis of the universities’ web pages and Facebook profiles was conducted, and a multivariable linear regression analysis was performed. The main results show that private and larger universities that lead Webometrics for Google Scholar Citations, and those that have gradually been adopting financial reporting, are the most interested in implementing Facebook as a two-way communication strategy. It seems that stakeholders react more to financial transparency and, therefore, universities still prefer financial disclosure to improve accountability.
Highlights
The demand for greater accountability and legitimacy has been changing in recent decades, which has implied greater information disclosure about the actions carried out by organizations [1]
Non-financial information has been seen in recent years as an alternative to that offered in traditional financial reports, to meet the demands of different stakeholders on issues related to legitimacy and accountability [4]
Considering that university managers implementing accountability mechanisms based on non-financial information need to meet the opinions of different stakeholders in order to open the participation process in management issues, this paper considered the stakeholder and legitimacy theories
Summary
The demand for greater accountability and legitimacy has been changing in recent decades, which has implied greater information disclosure about the actions carried out by organizations [1]. After the last economic crisis, organizations have begun to suffer from external pressure to be more responsible within the environment in which they operate [3]. In this regard, non-financial information has been seen in recent years as an alternative to that offered in traditional financial reports, to meet the demands of different stakeholders on issues related to legitimacy and accountability [4]. The balance between financial and non-financial transparency could be useful, providing an informational flow of public interest that allows stakeholders to engage with the organization and participate in decision-making [5]
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