Retrospective and Current in the Conceptual Approach to Financial and Non-financial Reporting

Abstract

In a context where financial information provided by economic entities is no longer sufficient to illustrate an accurate picture of the factual situation, as well as health crises, climate change, increasing stakeholder interest in non-financial information, all these have led to the progressive development of literature especially in the field of non-financial reporting. However, the quality of financial reporting is also a topic of interest among authors, as international financial reporting standards have been adopted by a wide variety of countries, and other countries are likely to adopt such standards in the near future. The objective of the research is to investigate aspects of financial and non-financial reporting previously addressed in the literature. The current stage of the research is carried out by systematic analysis on publications indexed in the Scopus database, and the period analysed is from 2000 to 2023. The systematic literature review is conducted by following the steps defined in previous studies. Each subsequent adaptation will be explained in the paper. In order to carry out the analysis, the coding procedure is applied. The research will be conducted in a two-dimensional framework, focusing on financial and non-financial literature. The first dimension will consider the direction in which the perimeter of financial and non-financial reporting has developed in recent years. Taking also into account that interest in financial and non-financial reporting has gained more and more ground in most fields in recent years, it is expected that the results will show an increase in the number of relevant articles published in recent years in this area. The second dimension concerns factors that have led to changes in financial and non-financial reporting. In order to achieve this objective, I will carry out a detailed analysis by defining an analytical framework built on criteria previously used in other similar works, and adapted to the current sample of articles. I believe that the paper addresses a topical issue and will be of interest and relevance for future academic research on financial and non-financial reporting.