Human and Intellectual Disclosure Practices of Indian Companies a Longitudinal Study

In the current era of knowledge oriented business, intellectual assets are to be valued as much as physical assets and the traditional financial reporting system did not keep pace with the growth of intangibles necessitating its disclosure voluntarily. To improve the usefulness of financial reporting, the companies need to focus on intangibles and innovation. The paper collates 15 items involving human and Intellectual Capital (HIC), the firms can focus to disclose. The items were selected after a rigorous process of examining the human and intellectual capital disclosures practices of companies around the world. After identifying the items of HIC disclosure the study measured the HIC disclosure practices of non- financial companies in the BSE 100 index for a period of five years, from 2009-2010 to 2013-2014. The study found significant differences in the disclosure scores across the years and the industry type. The study also examined the factors influencing the HIC disclosure practices by classifying the variables as firm character, financial and governance. It is found that size, foreign revenue, profitability, are the factors affecting the level of HIC disclosure.