published_or_final_version / abstract / Business / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

There has been little research on intellectual capital (IC) reporting practices of UK firms or on the incentives/disincentives that motivate them to disclose information about their value drivers. Therefore, this study explores annual report disclosures and seeks to explain why managers choose to disclose. The sample consists of 100 London Stock Exchange firms from nine knowledge-based sectors. Whilst adopting a primarily positive accounting theory explanation of disclosure, a new combination of theories (capital market transactions theory, proprietary costs theory and corporate governance theory) is used to generate explanatory variables. The results show that there is a skewing toward relational capital. However, there were large differences in the amount of information disclosed, both across sectors and, in many cases, inside sectors, suggesting that different sectors, or even different companies, may have quite different value drivers. Initial analysis of possible motives was conducted using an OLS regression including all possible explanatory independent variables. However, neither corporate governance nor proprietary costs are well-theorised, and several different variables were used to proxy each of these. Therefore, reduced regression models were also employed. Principal component analysis was used to generate one composite measure of corporate governance and proprietary costs. The results showed that reporting IC is negatively associated with the extent of external financing, while firms with high market-to-book values also disclose less IC information. However, contrary to expectations, the acquisition variable was insignificant although as expected, the relation between human capital disclosure and foreign operations was found to be positive and significant. For proprietary costs variables, there was a significantly positive relation between entry barriers and IC disclosure, and a negative relationship between IC and the intensity of industry competition. Finally, there was a significant, positive relationship between corporate governance and the disclosure of all types of IC.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-129). Also available in print.

Corporate disclosures play an important role in the capital market in passing on information to the relevant parties outside companies. Corporate information is useful because it can be used to assess businesses, update subjective estimations, and make effective decisions on the investment of resources. Analysts are considered major users of corporate information. Analysts are important in the sense that they are intermediaries who receive and process financial information for investors. The major tasks of analysts are to collect company information from various sources, analyse company performance, make earnings forecasts, and arrive at buy/hold/sell recommendations. As analysts intensely use financial information in their decision-making processes to reach decisions, the nature of their work is influenced by the quality of the information they use. / This thesis aims to provide evidence of the usefulness and relevance of voluntary disclosures to analysts' recommendation revisions. The study examines whether there is a relationship between voluntary disclosures and analysts' recommendations by observing what characteristics of voluntary disclosures are associated with the nature of analysts' recommendation revisions and the extent of that association. / The focus of the research is on changes in analyst recommendations and the new information disclosures that a company has made public since the previous revision. Company voluntary disclosures are observed from selected sources including company announcements, news and press releases, and annual reports. Analyst recommendation revisions are collected from the I/B/E/S recommendation history database, and these revisions are matched with the presence of voluntary disclosures during the change period. The nature of recommendation revisions are observed via four different measures: direction of change, magnitude of change, type of new recommendation and level of rating. Three research instruments are required for measuring the characteristics of voluntary disclosures; (1) content analysis methods used with company announcements and news to evaluate aspects of the narrative in terms of topic, favourability, and price-sensitivity, (2) a disclosure index used to measure information quantity in annual reports, and (3) a readability index used to measure quality of presentation. The use of alternative measures of recommendation revision, together with measures of both the quantity and quality of voluntary disclosures leads to the formulation of a number of subsidiary hypotheses for testing in this study. / Based on a sample of over 200 recommendation revisions of 40 listed Australian companies, the results suggest that voluntary disclosures do help to explain the variations in analyst recommendation revisions. The results reveal that the quantity of disclosures and readability scores are positively associated with the number of recommendation revisions, and that disclosures with favourable signals or with price-sensitive contents are significantly related to the direction and type of analyst revisions. In addition, disclosure of specific themes (e.g., dividend and product) in company announcements and news are significantly associated with the recommendation change. Readability scores also exhibit a significant positive relationship with the direction of change, suggesting that there is a relationship between the readability level of company announcements and recommendation revisions. However, no significant evidence is found between disclosure scores and the properties of recommendation revisions. / The findings have implications for both the formulation of accounting policies and the regulation of financial disclosures: knowledge of the key themes of disclosures which are associated with recommendation revisions might induce companies to adapt their disclosure strategy; regulators might also wish to pay more attention to such disclosures and their ability to meet the decision making needs of users. / Thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2004.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong Baptist University, 2007. / Adviser: Zhijun Lin. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. Media and Information Studies , 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 2, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-123). Also issued in print.

Thesis (PhD) - Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology, 2006. / A thesis is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology - 2006. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-246)