Trends of voluntary IC disclosure in Chinese firms

Abstract

This research examines the trend of voluntary intellectual capital (IC) disclosure in China between 2006 and 2009, using content analysis of corporate annual reports of 100 top listed A-share Chinese companies. The results indicate that there was a generally upward trend for the disclosure of IC items, categories and the overall IC over the investigated period. Internal capital was the most highly reported IC category whereas external capital was the least reported for year 2008 and 2009. For disclosure items, "management processes" was the best performer during the time while "licensing agreements" for 2006 and "research collaborations" for 2008 and 2009 were the poorest. It is believed that our research should have some contributions to the existing literature on IC disclosure.