Intellectual Capital Disclosure in the Digital Era: Challenges and Opportunities for MNEs

Abstract

The emergence and rapid development of digitalization impacts the way firms disclose business activity and key assets to their stakeholders. As numerous researchers indicate, intellectual capital is often the most important company resource. Thus its reporting is of crucial significance. The chapter aims to present the contemporary landscape of intellectual capital and corporate disclosure practices with a special emphasis on the challenges and opportunities of reporting via social media. An empirical study was undertaken to identify the current state of the various social media usage (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube) among multinational enterprises (MNEs). Studied firms provide great potential for disclosing intellectual capital with the help of social media. More than half of the studied firms (56%) adopt all five social media. MNEs from the digital technology industry outperformed other studied firms. Additionally, Facebook was the most popular social medium, followed by Instagram and Twitter.