Proceedings

eliable data, a rigorous and transparent coding procedure was undertaken by two
different coders. Each coder was given clear and transparent coding procedures to be
followed, respectively: only code for voluntary disclosure, code for meaning rather
than exact words as concepts are broad, code only for positive and negative meanings.
Discrepancies were analysed for size and for resolution.
The content analysis involved coding the information in accordance with a selected
framework of IC indicators. The IC framework was derived from the one used by
Guthrie and Petty (2000). For the purpose of our study, we modified this IC
framework to achieve a better comparison with other studies. As such, we kept the
headings and the items used by Guthrie and Petty, but we have added extra items
identified in the framework resulted from the work performed by a panel of
researchers from the World Congress on Intellectual Capital (WCIC) (Bontis 2003).
Professional judgment was used to eliminate redundancies between these two
frameworks. The resulting IC items are presented in Table 2.
Table 2. Categories of IC used for this study
Internal (Structural) Capital External (customer/relational) capital Emplyoee competence (human capital)
Intellectual Property Brand Know how (Employee know-how)
Patents Customers (Customer knowledge) Education (Employee Knowledge)
Copyrights Customer loyalty (Customer capital) Skills - vocational qualification (Employee Skills)
Trademarks Company names (Company Reputation) Work-related knowledge (Expertise)
Infrastructure asset Distribution channels Work-related competencies (Productivity)
Management philosophy Business collaboration Entrepreneurial spirit
Corporate Culture (Organisational Culture) Licensing agreeements Human Capital
Management processes (Management
Quality)
Favourable contracts Human Assets
Information Systems Franshising agreements
Networking systems (Expert Networks) Relational Capital
Financial Relations
Corporate University/Corporate learning
Cultural diversity
Structural Capital
Supplier Knowledge
The brackets present the terminology used by the researchers from the WCIC
corresponding to the one used by Guthrie and Petty (2000). Items that didn’t overlap
were added to those already existing obtaining in this way a total of 33 IC items
(14 for internal capital, 11 for external capital and 8 for human capital). This
extension allowed us to measure both the level of disclosing IC components and to
ascertain whether companies disclose the word itself, the latter finding being a proof
of the importance that companies give to IC. The method used was for one researcher
to read the annual reports and record information related to each attribute (location,
quantity and nature of the information) on a coding sheet. A second coder
independently confirmed the score of each company. This gives a high degree of
confidence in the overall result. Our content analysis focuses on voluntary
information (that is it is not required by an accounting standard or corporation law).
This is consistent with other ICDs studies (Guthrie and Petty, 2000; Brennan, 2001;
Ax and Marton, 2008).The results represent a matrix of information identifying the
incidence of IC reporting across 33 IC attributes, which was used to facilitate an
overall assessment of the extent to which IC is reported by Romanian listed
companies. Considering the limited length of annual report as cost and design reasons
limit the number of pages, volume or disclosure of a particular item signals how
important it is considered to be (Striukova et al., 2008). Although content analysis is a
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