Developments in Internet financial reporting : review and analysis, across five developed countries

Internet based corporate reporting is wide spread amongst companies of all sizes in most countries around the world. The development of online reporting practice has been rapid, largely mirroring, and motivated by, the development of the world-wide-web since 1994, being the primary Internet medium for online reporting. A number of studies of these developments have occurred over this time seeking to plot how companies are exploiting the media of the Internet and how they are developing their reporting practices in response to this ubiquitous route to current and potential investors, and other stakeholders. In this paper, we develop this literature further by extending the benchmarks that have been created to monitor this activity since the mid 1990s. This study focuses on the very largest companies in five countries around the world. It examines online reporting practices of 250 companies at the end of 2001 and in early 2002 by creating a detailed attribute analysis of common factors across the companies examined. In addition to illustrating developments in online reporting practices since the previous extensive studies were conducted in 1999 and early 2000, the results provide new insight into recent changes in this domain. It particularly illustrates how newer, more interactive, aspects of Internet technologies are now being exploited to enable us to benchmark these activities to follow their use in the near future. The paper then addresses the relationship between the size of companies and its level of reporting practices, and the differences between reporting practices of large companies listed primarily in the different countries examined. These results illustrate that reporting practices differ significantly between companies in different domains.La investigación de corporaciones basada en internet está muy extendida entre compañías de todos los tamaños en la mayoría de países del mundo. El desarrollo de la investigación online ha sido rápido, prácticamente imitando (y motivado por) el desarrollo del mundo online desde 1994, siendo la fuente de principal para este medio. Se han llevado a cabo numerosos estudios acerca de estos desarrollos, buscando trazar cómo las compañías están explotando este recurso de internet y cómo están desarrollando sus procedimientos en la búsqueda de potenciales inversores y otros activistas. En este artículo, desarrollamos esta literatura más allá extendiendo los límites que han sido creados para monitorizar esta actividad desde mediados de los 90. Este estudio se centra en las compañías más grandes a lo largo del mundo. Examina prácticas de investigación online de 250 compañías al final de 2001 y principios de 2002, creando un análisis detallado de los factores comunes que comparten estas compañías. En adición a ilustrar estos desarrollos desde los estudios previos, los resultados proporcionan una nueva visión en los cambios recientes en este dominio. Particularmente ilustra cómo los aspectos de internet más recientes están siendo explotados para permitirnos marcar estas actividades para seguir su uso en el futuro cercano. El artículo hace referencia también a la relación entre el tamaño de las compañías y su nivel de búsqueda, y con respecto a las primeras compañías en los listados de cada país. Los resultados nos muestran que estas prácticas difieren significativamente entre compañías pertenecientes a diferentes campos

A Model for Understanding the Impact of the World Wide Web on Accounting Academia

The growth of the Internet and the subsequent development of the user-friendly World Wide Web (web) have major implications for accounting education. Academia must reassess its roles and identify the impacts the web will have on students, instruction and faculty, as wells as on the interaction among those elements of academia and between them and the accounting world

Money and Mental Health Evidence Review

The rapid evidence review aimed to examine the relationship between money and mental health, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current cost of living situation

Tapping taxes – digital disruption and revenue administration responses:Digital Disruption and Revenue Administration Responses

Tapping taxes is a metaphor for exploring whether the next wave of digital disruption will have as dramatic an impact on the future management of revenue systems as it continues to have on business models. It is now being asked, will revenue administrations face dramatic disruption from digital competitors? This chapter explores a future operating model of digital integration, where revenue systems tap seamlessly into the digital footprints of people and businesses. While engagement with revenue systems has become increasingly digital and efficient over time, it has fundamentally remained separate, with data ingested and then exploited by revenue authorities. This chapter touches on some of the technological innovations and trends that could be stepping-stones into a future where revenue administration systems are directly connected to transactional and other systems. In the future, taxpayers may literally tap to transact and, as a by-product, their tax returns may be automatically prepared, and their tax calculated and paid. This chapter explores some capability implications for revenue administrations, practitioners, and taxpayers before discussing some of the legal, ethical, and capability challenges and opportunities that integration would create for data governance. It concludes with some recommendations. Although this study focuses on intra-country analysis, many of the issues have broader, inter-country implications that are beyond the scope of this chapte

Digital reporting options for Europe: a socio-technical analysis of interactive data from the perspective of non-professional investors

On 17 December 2008 the United States’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted in favour of phasing in the mandatory submission of digital reporting using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The SEC’s interactive data project is the most significant adoption of XBRL for financial reporting purposes to date because of the proportion of the world’s capital markets affected and because the SEC has a mandate to disseminate reports for the benefit of all investors. It means that within the next few years there will be free access to large numbers of tagged company reports for a significant portion of the world’s capital market. The SEC’s stated motivation in the interactive data project is to protect non-professional investors (Cox, 2007), who as a group are often claimed to be a focus for capital market regulators and accounting standard setters. This Briefing reports the findings of a detailed analysis of the social and technical factors that were important in the development of the SEC’s interactive data project and assesses the prospects for a similar development in Europe. We have used the perspective of non-professional investors in a wide-ranging, multi-method study. As well as qualitative analysis using interviews and focus groups, an experiment was conducted to compare the use of PDF and interactive data in investment decision making. The study contributes to an understanding of non-professional investors as stakeholders in the interactive data project and any similar potential development in Europe