دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی عامل تحرک گزارش سرمایه فکری؛ شواهدی از کویت - امرالد 2017

Abstract

Purpose – Motivated by the increased attention on intellectual capital reporting (ICR) from regulatory bodies, practitioners, and researchers and the recent calls for companies to supplement and complement their traditional financial statements with intellectual capital (IC) disclosure, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers of ICR among the companies listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE). Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis was applied to the annual reports of all companies listed on the KSE in 2013. A multiple regression analysis was employed to explore the ICR drivers. Findings – Despite the growing importance of ICR in capital markets, the study findings reveal an overall relatively low level of ICR among KSE-listed companies. In addition, the level of ICR varies significantly between companies. The results show that the level of ICR for all KSE-listed companies in 2013 ranged from 0 to 96 percent and the mean was 28 percent. The multiple regression analysis suggests that older, highly leveraged, larger, and profitable KSE-listed companies are associated with higher levels of ICR. Industrial sector is a partial driver. Practical implications – Surprisingly, many of the KSE-listed companies do not disclose any IC information in their annual reports. Given the increasingly important role that IC information plays in capital markets, regulatory bodies should encourage, stimulate, and guide companies to report IC information. The findings offer insights as to the drivers of ICR that should improve efforts to develop recommendations that push for greater IC disclosure in corporate annual reports. Originality/value – The study is the first examination of ICR drivers in Kuwait. It contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence about ICR in a market with specific economic, social, and cultural characteristics. It enhances our understanding of ICR by revealing some of its drivers.

5. Discussion and conclusion

Motivated by the increased attention to IC disclosure from regulatory bodies, practitioners, and researchers and the recent calls for companies to supplement and complement their traditional financial statements with IC disclosure, the objective of this empirical study is to investigate the drivers of ICR among the companies listed on the KSE. Six hypotheses were developed as to the influence of company characteristics on the level of ICR in companies listed on the KSE in 2013. ICR was hypothesized to increase with company age (H1), leverage (H2), size (H3), performance (H4), and type of auditor (H5) and vary as a function of industrial sector (H6).

The study uses the classical framework developed by Sveiby (1997) and modified by Guthrie et al. (2004) to evaluate the IC disclosure. The framework is most widely used in the ICR literature and divides IC into three main components: internal capital, external capital, and human capital. An equal weight disclosure index of 24 IC indicators was developed based on the adopted framework. To validate the completeness and comprehensiveness of the constructed IC disclosure to the Kuwaiti business environment, the index was reviewed by academic and experienced professionals. To determine the extent of ICR, content analysis was applied to the 2013 annual reports of all companies listed on the KSE. After determining the level of IC disclosure, the next step was to investigate the association between the level of ICR and a company’s attributes to explain why companies differ in their IC disclosure levels. The ICR level obtained from the IC disclosure index is used as the dependent variable and a company’s attributes are used as independent variables in a multiple regression model.