Measuring intellectual capital disclosure of Romanian listed companies

Abstract

In our study we aimed to measure the level of intellectual capital disclosure for 38 Romanian selected companies and to test some of the correlations among the main factors that may influence the disclosure degree of intellectual capital (ICD index). Content analysis was conducted on 72 selected items of intellectual capital during 2010-2013, gathering data primarily from annual reports. ICD index revealed that Romanian knowledge based companies disclosed a low volume of information on intellectual capital for the selected period. Four of the six analyzed industries included in the sample recorded a low degree of ICD index, the only industry in which at least one company ensures a high level of ICD index (above 0.666) is the pharmaceutical. Using Chi-square test and Kruskal Wallis test we have showed that the type of industry influences the (global) ICD index and ICD index of human capital, structural and relational capital is significantly different in each industry. Also, the performed statistical tests confirmed the existence of a significant difference between the degrees of disclosure of intellectual capital, the one of the companies listed on BSE being much higher than the one of the companies traded on RASDAQ.