DISCLOSING NON-FINANCIAL INFORMATION IN COMPANIES’ REPORTS IN CROATIA

Abstract

Subsequent to the provision of the Directive 2014/95/EU requiring disclosure of non-financial and diversity information of all EU Member States companies with 500 and more employees, a research was conducted at the beginning of 2016 on a sample of sustainability reports disclosed by Croatian companies in 2014 that had registered 400 and more employees in that same year, with an assumption of their growth by 2018 in terms of the number of their employees. This research was focused on the structure of the indicators identified in non-financial reports, viewed as content-oriented and entry-oriented measures (attributes). The indicators analyzed were extracted from the original research done on the quality of non-financial reports of the companies in Croatia registering 400 and more employees. The method employed was a content analysis. The results show that many of the disclosed sustainability indicators are “story-tellers”, meaning that they are past-oriented and qualitatively stated, suggesting that activities concerning sustainability in company are present, but no cause-effect relationships are presented therein. The results point to a need for significant improvements in defining a minimum of requirements for the indicators disclosed in non-financial reports. Since very few indicators reflect all of the attributes assessed in this research, there is a need for finding ways to capture relevant data in accounting of enterprises, so as to establish a requirement for comparability of non-financial information disclosed in sustainability reports and thus bring about the requirements of the Directive 2014/95/EU.