Corporate governance and intellectual capital disclosure. An empirical analysis of the Italian listed companies

Abstract

Intellectual capital (IC) as well as disclosure of information on IC has in recent years gained importance. IC is the key issue in strengthening a firm’s competitive position and in achieving its objectives. The purpose of this study is to investigate some determinants of the disclosure of IC in annual reports. In particular the aim of this research is to analyse the internal mechanisms of corporate governance (board composition, role duality, ownership structure, auditor type and size of audit committee), which influence the intellectual capital disclosure in corporate annual reports for a sample of all listed Italian firms at 31st December 2010. It has been used a disclosure index as a dependent variable, (ICD), and the method used to measure it is content analysis.