Intellectual capital disclosure in sustainability reports

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the level and the quality of voluntary disclosures of intellectual capital (IC) in the sustainability reports on a sample of Italian listed companies. We conducted an analysis on twelve sustainability reports for two years (2009-2010). These are related to six firms selected among the most capitalized 37 Italian listed companies. To investigate the “level of disclosure” we identified the presence of IC information, while to evaluate the “IC quality” we constructed a voluntary disclosure index based on content analysis. IC information disclosure is more likely present in sustainability reports of firms with a higher level of application of the Global Reporting Initiative framework. The results confirm that the sustainability report can adequately represent the intellectual capital, especially in order to understand its role in the firm and the interaction with other variables present in the firm.