Understanding research findings and evidence on corporate reporting: An independent literature review

Abstract

Executive Summary: The FRC commissioned a literature review of academic articles and research papers to determine the extent to which analyses have been undertaken which support the objectives of the Future of Corporate Reporting (FoCR) project. For the purpose of this review we agreed to define corporate reporting as financial and nonfinancial information included in annual reports, quarterly reports, restatements, earnings announcements and other ad-hoc and stand-alone reports (such as sustainability, CSR, integrated reports). We use the term financial reporting to indicate disclosure of financial information such as that contained in the financial statements, including the notes, but also the narrative discussion of corporate performance (i.e. narratives or other quantitative indicators that complement financial data, for example narrative information in the strategic report or management discussion and analysis). Non-financial reporting includes corporate social responsibility (CSR), social, environmental or sustainability reports (which are interchangeable terms), as well as other types of narrative information included in specific sections of the annual reports (such as for example, risk disclosure, or disclosures about environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues) or in other corporate documents (integrated reports, intellectual capital statements, etc.). A list of questions to be addressed was discussed between the academics and the FRC and the preliminary mapping between the structure of the report and the list of questions was agreed as shown in the following table. A detailed mapping out of how this report addresses all these questions is included in the concluding section.[...]