The quality of voluntary and mandatory disclosures in company reports: a systematic literature network analysis

Abstract

Adopting Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA), this paper reviews the existing literature on the quality of company reports, defined as both voluntary and mandatory disclosures in financial and non-financial reports. The paper provides a chronological view of the extant literature by combining a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with a Bibliographic Network Analysis (BNA). The SLR included a final sample of 883 papers from 1975 to 2020, while the BNA detected the evolution of knowledge and consequently, four main themes have emerged: the voluntary disclosure behaviour of firms; company voluntary disclosure and firm performance; earnings management; and the disclosure of CSR activities. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes three research streams that require further investigation: (i) CSR disclosure, capital markets, and digitalisation; (ii) IFRS adoption, contextual factors, and governance mechanisms; and (iii) managerial ownership and text mining.