A comparative analysis of human capital disclosure in annual reports and sustainability reports

Parker (2007) and Beattie and Thomson (2010) argue that despite exten-sive research, the investigation of voluntary intellectual capital disclosure and its categories is still a main topic in the external research agenda and that its understanding is a key aspect in the accounting profession’s future. To extend this kind of analysis, more comparative studies confronting dif-ferent types of documents should be undertaken to assess and verify their similarities, differences, and links (Striukova et al., 2008). In conjunction with this discussion, this research aims to compare the extent and quality of human capital disclosure between a sample of 52 annual reports and a sample of 52 sustainability reports published by listed Italian companies. The main purpose is to contribute to the debate concerning the supply of human capital information through different public channels in light of the importance of human capital for the external evaluation of a company and its legitimation. The chapter also provides some speculation regarding the typology and quality of human capital information disclosed by sustainabil-ity reports and human capital information used by financial market agents in order to verify the presence of a hypothetical coherence between the two classes of information.