Intellectual Capital Disclosure in Corporate Annual Reports

The problem of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) is considerably discussed by both academics and practitioners. Among the valid reasons behind the ongoing debate are the growing presence and importance of intellectual capital (IC) in corporate value chains and its insufficient accounting recognition in today’s corporations. One of the presumed manifestations of this disparity can be observed in the increasing divergence between firms’ book and market values. This book provides systematic insights into existing theoretical foundations of ICD and employs content analysis to examine certain aspects of discursive and numerical ICD in selected annual reports. Different perspectives are used in order to grasp the problem of IC conceptualization and in the search for a more thorough understanding of IC valuation basic axiological aspects are considered. The book argues that absence of plausible IC valuation modalities compatible with the standing accounting standards prevents its more prevalent disclosure and suggests that along the nomenclatural unification and appraisal focus the discipline should shift from the definitional emphasis to the operational approach.