Voluntary disclosure of intellectual capital in the Brazilian context: an investigation informed by the international context

Sandra Rolim Ensslin and Fernando Nitz De Carvalho

International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, 2007, vol. 4, issue 4/5, 478-500

Abstract: This study investigates whether and how Brazilian companies disclose Intellectual Capital (IC) in their Annual Reports (ARs) and whether this voluntary disclosure behaves in a way similar to that in the international context. The study examines the ARs of the 25 top Brazilian open organisations (Social Capital) listed at BOVESPA (Sao Paulo Stock Exchange) on 31 December 2004. The 'content analysis' technique (Guthrie et al., 1999) was used together with Sveiby's classificatory framework (1997). The study revealed a: high incidence of voluntary IC disclosure in ARs of Brazilian organisations; trend towards disclosure in qualitative (narrative) terms; high frequency of External Capital (EC) as an IC category; similarity in the results obtained both in the Brazilian and the international contexts, particularly as regards similar studies in Australia and Sri Lanka: reporting EC is more in favour in the three contexts with differences regarding the most reported element.

Keywords: accounting; annual reports; Brazil; intellectual capital; voluntary disclosure; international context; Australia; Sri Lanka. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=17089 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijaape:v:4:y:2007:i:4/5:p:478-500

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().