A stakeholder analysis of employee disclosures in annual reports

Abstract

Little empirical research has identified what drives companies to voluntarily report employee-related information. Ullmann’s three-dimensional stakeholder theory model is applied as a framework to analys e associations with corporate employee-related disclosures. Measures are developed to estimate stakeholder power, strategic posture and economic performance associated with employee-related disclosures. Results indicate that employee-related disclosures increase with more employee share ownership, employee concentration, the quality of corporate governance, employee recognition in corporate mission statements, adverse publicity about employees an d economic performance measured by profit per employee.