Proceedings

comprehensive in some industries, such as, utility, and financial services, than others,
such as, publishing. Literature provides complementary interpretation keys for
explaining the industry effect on corporate disclosure: this is because proprietary costs
vary across industries (Meek et al, 1995); firms are pressed to disclose industryrelated
information in their annual reports (Cooke, 1992) by external investors who
need information on a company’s relative position in an industry in order to assess
company value (Dye, 1985); disclosure within an industry may also be shaped by the
behaviour of a dominant company (Cooke, 1992); the international exposure of a
particular industry might affect the extent of disclosure (Raffournier, 1995);
intellectual capital is in some industries more important than in others and therefore
value-relevant for investors. The results obtained with respect to the variable industry
type are mixed, in the way that the studies reviewed which considered that industry
type is a determinant for ICD (Bozzolan et al., 2003, Bozzolan et al., 2006, Oliveira et
al., 2006, Boesso and Kumar, 2007, Bruggen et al., 2009, Branco et al., 2011) were
almost balanced by the number of studies that concluded industry type does not have
influence on ICD (Beaulieu et al., 2002, Garcıa-Meca et al., 2005, Rimmel et al.,
2009, Huang et al., 2010). This, corroborated with the fact that 77% of the studies
tested this correlation, brought us to the following null hypothesis:
H2: There is no relation between type of industry (traditional versus knowledge
intensive) in which the company is operating and IC disclosure
Last but not least, we test whether there is any combination between company size
and industry type that may have influenced the level of ICD and formulate the
following hypothesis:
H3: There is no relation between the combination of company size and industry
type and IC disclosure
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This section contains a description of (1) the sample and data selection; (2) the
content analysis used to assess the quantity and the quality of ICD; (3) the
methodology used to test if company size and industry type are determinants of the
level of ICD.
2.1. Data Selection
There is evidence from prior studies that ICDs tend to be predominantly discursive in
nature (Ax and Marton, 2008, Guthrie and Petty, 2000; Goh and Lim, 2004, Bukh et.
al 2005). According to the results obtained by Petty et al. (2008), 68% of their
respondents used the annual report to learn more about a company and as an aid to
decision-making. This is consistent with the literature that positions the annual report
as a key accountability document to stakeholders (Lang and Lundholm, 1993).
According to Garcia-Mecca (2005) analysts and investors, draw on annual report
information in their work and this is not only related to financial information, but also
to non financial and narrative reporting. Additionally, much of the literature suggests
annual reports as basis for gathering data. In order to provide comparison with these
studies and future ones, this paper uses annual reports only. Information that is
disclosed by other means, such as on websites is not included. In addition, this study
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