Examining the Adoption of Extensible Business Reporting Language among Public Listed Companies in Malaysia

AbstractThis study examines the adoption of an accounting information systems language known as Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) among public listed companies in Malaysia. Using 100 top public listed companies as the sample study, this study examines whether these companies have adopted XBRL, consistent with the call made by the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM) for such adoption. Such call was made to encourage listed public companies to provide their annual reports via XBRL and ultimately improves harmonisation between companies and between countries. The result of this study shows that to this date, no public listed companies have adopted XBRL. Such scenario indicates that there could be issues and challenges that have deter the implementation of XBRL among these companies. The result in this study serves as a starting point for CCM and other Malaysian regulators to consider the issues and challenges as to why such scenario exists and subsequently, provide strategies to encourage these companies to adopt XBRL

The Development of a New Digital Business Reporting Standard - Inline XBRL

Digital reporting has become one of the key elements for regulatory reporting by businesses to the government in the UK. By tagging financial information with individual codes that are based on accounting standards and regulatory reporting regime, financial reports are now transformed into eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) instance documents and can be processed by XBRL-enabled software tools. This research explores how two of the governmental bodies in the UK - HM Revenue and Customs and Companies House - got involved in a close cooperation with the XBRL community in the UK and together with IT consultants and technical experts developed a human-readable format of XBRL, known as Inline XBRL (iXBRL). The central concern is the fabrication of the new standard through formation of a network of actors and objects involved in the process. The study adopts an Actor Network Theory perspective that highlights the complexity of technology implementation in regulatory environments using concepts from sociomateriality theory (Latour, 2005; Leonardi & Barley, 2008). It draws on documentary evidence and semi-structured interviews with regulators, software vendors, and other organisations involved in developing digital reporting facility in the UK. The study has found that iXBRL affordances acted as a catalyst for the network to grow and the regulators to fulfil their obligations by addressing the pressures from major consulting companies, accounting professional bodies, and software vendors. The XBRL rendering functionality produced the perception of both capability for users of financial reports and constraint for filers. To overcome this constraint, the network of actors directed all resources to producing a visually more accessible rendering mechanism that was inscribed in iXBRL. By focusing on the UK unique context of the mandate of iXBRL-based filing, the thesis contributes by illustrating what was compromised and what was gained for heterogeneous groups of actors when establishing the infrastructure for digital business reporting

The Role of XBRL on EMAS Reporting: An Analysis of Organisational Values Compatibility

This paper proposes a measurement method for assessing the extent to which the XBRL digital standard eXtensible Business Reporting Language can assist firms in implementing their reporting when applying EMAS The EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme. A specific survey based on the work of (Bunker et al., 2007), which uses Value Compatibility, was carried out at the most important firms in Southern Spain. Different sectors were involved in the study: public hospital, copper manufacturing facilities, petrochemical plant and pulp and renewable energy production. The results reveal some concordances between EMAS using XBRL as a reporting technology, and the cultural, organisational and technical working environment of the analysed firms, specifically those related to the Structural Dimension. By contrast, some discordance is highlighted related to the Practical Dimension. The paper proposes for the first time the application of the global financial standard XBRL for a non financial purpose like the widely accepted EMAS, to actual potential uses in real scenarios. The empirical research combined heavy industry with services, privately owned firms with public entities, private and public sector, in the analysis of this technology. The paper represents a necessary landmark for a subsequent longitudinal study.JEL Codes - D8; M14; M15; M41; M4

Empirical investigations into corporate reporting in Europe: A financial market perspective on determinants and consequences of sustainability and digital reporting

This paper-based dissertation comprises five essays dealing with corporate sustainability and digital reporting and is structured in six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction and provides an overview of the structure and aims of the dissertation, lays out the contribution of the work, and introduces the five manuscripts. The second chapter, respectively the first manuscript, deals with the consequences of mandatory sustainability reporting in Europe. Specifically, the study deals with the question whether Directive 2014/95/EU has achieved its objectives of increasing reporting quantity and quality. In the third chapter, the sustainability reports of the largest European firms are analyzed using computer-aided text analysis. This study investigates whether and how external assurance of sustainability reports is beneficial from the viewpoint of report transparency, which is proxied by reporting scope, optimism, and readability. In the fourth chapter, the role of corporate sustainability in the context of M&A transactions is examined, precisely whether sustainability influences the premia paid in M&A transactions. The fifth and the sixth chapters center around the voluntary usage of online financial reporting (OFR) in Europe. While the fifth chapter is concerned with the usage and empirical determinants of OFR, the analysis in the sixth chapter examines the impact of OFR on the financial market, specifically on analyst following and stock liquidity

XBRL and Disclosure Management System implementation and their effect in group reporting process. CASE: Company XXXX

The purpose of this study is to research how the single electronic reporting format in accordance with the European Single Electronic Format mandate affect the external reporting practices in publicly listed companies in the European region and what kind of changes the ESEF mandate causes in the Company XXXX. In addition to this, another significant goal of this research is to describe how the implementation of the Disclosure Management System affects Company XXXX’s external reporting process and what changes, risks and opportunities it creates for the reporting process. The study is highly topical, as according to the ESEF mandate all European publicly listed companies must report their financial statements and annual reports in a single electronic format from the 2020 financial statements onwards. The financial statements shall be prepared in XHTML format and the IFRS consolidated financial statements included in the XHTML document must be marked with XBRL tags based on ESEF taxonomy. Theoretical background of this research is based on previous research material focusing on fi-nancial reporting, XBRL as well as what type of different approaches can be used within the implementation of XBRL. Theoretical sections also include previous literature on what type of changes, challenges as well as the opportunities XBRL reporting has caused in group reporting processes. Besides academical research material, the governmental sources as well as different accounting organizations such as IFRS foundation has been used as an information sources in this research. On the other hand, empirical material of this research is based on the participatory observation, internal documentation, project documentation and formal and informal discus-sion with the other project staff and key finance personnel in Company XXXX. The analysis and the results arising from the research material reflect to a significant extent the perceptions of Company XXXX’s project personnel as well as the researchers own observations. As a result of the research, the European Single Electronic Format was seen to harmonize the financial reporting of publicly listed companies operating in Europe, thus improving the compa-rability between the companies. The most significant changes in the companies' reporting pro-cesses were related to the XBRL tagging of IFRS consolidated financial statements and delivery of annual financial statements in the XHTML format. The XBRL tagging was executed in Company XXXX as an in-house process by tagging the IFRS consolidated financial statements by using the implemented Disclosure Management System. Overall, the implementation Disclosure Manage-ment System and XBRL tagging caused significant changes in the group reporting process as it went through an extensive amount of changes. The most significant changes were related to the successful partial automation of the external reporting process as well as by shifting the work more in to in-house process. The research results were able to increase the theory of XBRL in Europe and emphasize the importance of automation in financial reporting.Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on tutkia, kuinka yhtenäinen sähköinen raportointimuoto (European Single Electronic Format) vaikuttaa ulkoiseen raportointiprosessiin julkisesti noteera-tuissa yrityksissä Euroopan alueella ja millaisia muutoksia ESEF:n käyttöönotto aiheuttaa Yritys XXXX:ssä. Tämän lisäksi tutkimuksen toinen merkittävä tavoite on kuvata, kuinka Disclosure Ma-nagement -järjestelmän käyttöönotto vaikuttaa Yritys XXXX: n ulkoiseen raportointiprosessiin ja mitä muutoksia, riskejä sekä mahdollisuuksia käyttöönotosta syntyy. Tutkimus on hyvin ajan-kohtainen, koska ESEF:n toimeksiannon mukaan kaikkien Eurooppalaisten pörssiyhtiöiden on raportoitava tilinpäätöksensä ja vuosikertomuksensa yhtenäisessä sähköisessä muodossa vuo-den 2020 tilinpäätöksestä lähtien. Tilinpäätös on laadittava XHTML-muodossa ja XHTML-asiakir-jaan sisältyvä IFRS-konsernitilinpäätös on merkittävä XBRL-tunnisteilla ESEF-taksonomian mu-kaisesti. Tämän tutkimuksen teoreettinen tausta perustuu aikaisempaan tutkimusmateriaaliin, joka on keskittynyt taloudelliseen raportointiin, XBRL:ään sekä XBRL:n erilaisiin implementaatiotapoi-hin. Teoriaosuus sisältää myös aikaisempaa kirjallisuutta siitä, minkä tyyppisiä muutoksia, haas-teita ja mahdollisuuksia XBRL-raportointi on aiheuttanut konserniraportoinnissa. Akateemisen tutkimusmateriaalin lisäksi tutkimuksen tietolähteinä on käytetty viranomaislähteitä sekä las-kentatoimeen keskittyneitä säätiöiden materiaalia, kuten IFRS-säätiön. Tämän tutkimuksen em-piirinen aineisto perustuu osallistuvaan havaintoon, sisäiseen dokumentaatioon, projektidoku-mentaatioon sekä muodolliseen ja epäviralliseen keskusteluun yrityksen muiden projektihenki-löstön ja avainhenkilöiden kanssa. Tutkimusmateriaalin analyysi ja tulokset heijastavat merkit-tävissä määrin Company XXXX:n projektissa mukana olevan henkilöstön sekä tutkijan havaintoja. Tutkimuksen tuloksina Eurooppalaisen sähköisen raportointimuodon nähtiin yhtenäistävän Eu-roopassa toimivien pörssiyhtiöiden taloudellista raportointia ja parantavan siten yritysten ver-tailtavuutta. Merkittävimmät muutokset yritysten raportointiprosesseissa liittyivät IFRS-konser-nitilinpäätösten XBRL-merkintään ja vuositilinpäätösten toimittamiseen XHTML-muodossa. XBRL tunnisteiden merkintä suoritettiin Yritys XXXX:n sisäisenä prosessina merkitsemällä IFRS-konsernitilinpäätöksen päälaskelmat käyttöönotetun Disclosure Management System -järjestel-män avulla. Disclosure Management -järjestelmä ja XBRL-merkinnät toivat mukanaan merkittä-viä muutoksia konsernin raportointiprosessiin. Merkittävimmät muutokset liittyivät ulkoisen ra-portointiprosessin onnistuneeseen osittaiseen automatisointiin sekä työvaiheiden keskittämi-seen yrityksen sisäiseksi prosessiksi. Tutkimustulokset pystyivät lisäämään XBRL-teoriaa Euroo-passa ja korostamaan automaation merkitystä taloudellisessa raportoinnissa

XBRL financial reporting supply chain architecture

Recently the Internet with XML technologies and especially XBRL technology has impacted what is recognised as the financial reporting supply chain. Some claims in the market report that XBRL has the potential to reduce inefficiencies, automate and optimise the financial reporting supply chain. Nevertheless the real nature of the impact still remains unclear. The growing number of XBRL projects around the world together with strong interest from bodies such as the SEC in the United States, CEBS in the European Union and the IASB building XBRL taxonomies demonstrate the need for research in the area of XBRL application in the context of financial accounting and accounting information systems as well as in the financial reporting supply chain context. In order to answer the demand on the research in this area this research addresses financial reporting supply chain on the basis of financial accounting literature. With the introduction of information systems for enterprises, financial reporting was often discussed as a part of the AIS literature. Nevertheless the supply chain character and information systems context of financial reporting are rarely considered in the research literature in any theoretically constituent manner. This study examines the impact of XBRL on the financial reporting supply chain architecture. First goal of this thesis is to properly state and set the boundaries of financial reporting supply chain. In order to realise the goal modelling of financial reporting domain as financial reporting supply chain architecture is conducted. The second goal is to critically assess impact of XBRL on the modelled financial reporting supply chain architecture components. This assessment is conducted by enhancing financial reporting supply chain architecture with XBRL components thus modelling XBRL financial reporting supply chain architecture. The secondary goal of the assessment is the construction of the reference model of XBRL financial reporting supply chain architecture

XBRL and the qualitative characteristics of useful financial statement information

Purpose of the Thesis The purpose of the thesis is to explore, identify, describe and evaluate technological and accounting issues and problems and their potential solutions that are related to the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), together with providing some further research ideas. Research Methods and Data The thesis is conducted as a literature review of scientific journal articles and working papers. XBRL has emerged as a solution to many so-called “wicked” problems related to financial reporting in the Internet, a field where little theoretical understanding can a priori be taken for granted, and where pragmatic problem-solving procedures are needed to develop a solution that can be adopted for general use. The review follows the phases of a constructive Design Research process. Technological and accounting issues are discussed and evaluated at each phase, with the qualitative characteristics of useful financial statement information, relevance and faithful representation as the two fundamental qualitative characteristics and comparability and understandability as the most pertinent of the enhancing qualitative characteristics, used as the main accounting evaluation criteria. Results The results indicate that there still remain many types of significant technical deficiencies in the first officially filed XBRL financial statements. Moreover, XBRL seems to bring in new types of deficiencies, which jeopardize the faithful representation objective of financial statements. Consequently, new types of assurance assertions and procedures are being developed. The flexibility of both accounting standards and XBRL taxonomies seem to lead to severe interoperability and accounting comparability problems, which might be mitigated by for instance adopting strictly template-based accounting standards. Tentative results indicate that XBRL does enhance the usefulness of financial statements by making them more understandable to users, thereby helping them make better investment decisions. The mandatory adoption of XBRL seems to have affected market information conditions in many countries somewhat, but it has not been established yet that XBRL would be affecting the content or relevance of the financial statement information itself. XBRL is viewed by many constituencies as an enabling technology in a longer-term shift from a paper-based to electronic financial reporting paradigm. At present, however, XBRL can be viewed as a regulator-driven infrastructure project, and affordable end-user software will probably be needed for its adoption and acceptance among the investing public. Europe and Finland are lagging behind in introducing XBRL, which may actually help in the end by enabling learning from the mistakes of others

A review of the study on the impacts of the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)

eXtensible business reporting language (XBRL) is an electronic tool with the acceptable global standard for the electronic financial data to communicate and to be compiled, analyzed and shared among the stakeholders. The implementation of XBRL brings some benefits and impacts to all of the users of financial reports. This study aims to identify the research trends on the impact of XBRL and issues related to it. Forty-six articles related to the impact of XBRL was extracted from the Scopus database and Google Scholar. The result from the study found that a study regarding the XBRL impact has shown slightly increase until 2014 but has not grown much since then. There are a few perspectives that have been discovered to investigates on how XBRL affected certain users of the financial reports. This study will give a general picture of the current research on the impact of XBRL, the trend, and future direction of the research related to the XBRL

Factors influencing the perceived timeline to adopt XBRL amongst public listed companies in Malaysia

Technology development has impacted the way businesses disseminate information to its stakeholders. eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) offers the ability to exchange business and financial information globally through a digitalized global standard language which is part of the global integrated reporting. There are limited studies on XBRL and enormous opportunities for further research globally, as well as in Malaysia. There have been studies on awareness and intention to adopt XBRLbased digital reporting, but no study has been conducted to understand the internal and external factors that would drive the perceived timeline to adopt XBRL amongst Public Listed Companies (PLC) in Malaysia. The goal of this study is in line with the Companies Commission of Malaysia (Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM))’s intent to promote the voluntary adoption of XBRL in 2018 and upcoming mandates by other agencies. The proposed perceived timeline on XBRL adoption model was adapted from a previous study which represents an all-inclusive study at firm level as it combines the internal and external variables from the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) Model, Technology, Organization and Environment (TOE) Framework (1990) and Iacovou et al. (1995) Model. The model was tested with data collected from 256 executives and managers of PLCs in Peninsular Malaysia. The findings of the study demonstrates that internal factors such as management characteristics (Management Innovativeness and Management Knowledge) and organisational characteristic (Internet Knowledge) along with external environmental factor (External Pressure) would influence the perceived timeline for XBRL adoption amongst Malaysian PLCs. The results support the current body of knowledge on the internal and external determinants influencing the perceived timeline of XBRL adoption and enable sufficient measures to be taken by authorities to increase the XBRL Adoption readiness amongst PLCs in Malaysia. The findings will prepare PLCs for a successful XBRL implementation before it is mandated in Malaysi