Human resource disclosures in UK corporate annual reports: To what extent do these reflect organisational priorities towards labour?
Human resource disclosures in UK corporate annual reports: To what extent do these reflect organisational priorities towards labour?
Our study analyses the nature, quality and extent of human resource disclosures (HRDs) of UK Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 firms by relying on a novel disclosure index measuring the depth and breadth of disclosures. Contextually, we focus on the five-year period following the then Labour government’s attempts to encourage firms to formally report on their human resource management practices and to foster deeper employer-employee engagement. First, we evaluate the degree to which companies report comprehensively (or substantively) on a number of HRD items that we classify as “procedural” or “sustainable.” Second, we hypothesise that a company’s employee relation ideology (using a proxy to measure a company’s level of “unitarism”) is positively associated with HRD. Our results indicate that: (i) whilst there has been an increase in the breadth of HRD in terms of procedural and sustainable items being disclosed, the evolution towards a more comprehensive and in-depth form of HRD remains rather limited; and (ii) there is a positive association between a company’s employee relation ideology (unitarism) and the level of HRD. Theoretically, we conceive of HRD both as a reflection of an organisation’s orientation towards a key stakeholder (unitarist relations with labour) and a legitimacy seeking exercise at a time of changing societal conditions. We contribute to the scant literature on the extent and determinants of HRD since prior research tends to subsume employee-related disclosures within the broader concept of social, ethical or intellectual capital disclosures. We also propose a disclosure checklist to underpin future HRD research.
Human resource disclosure, Employee relation ideology, Stakeholder theory, Legitimacy theory
1-23
Vithana, Krishanthi
f6916e65-2c61-43ab-8ce3-897a2f8b6591
Soobaroyen, Teerooven
6686e2f8-564f-4f7f-b079-9dc8a2f53a48
Ntim, Collins G.
1f344edc-8005-4e96-8972-d56c4dade46b
Vithana, Krishanthi
f6916e65-2c61-43ab-8ce3-897a2f8b6591
Soobaroyen, Teerooven
6686e2f8-564f-4f7f-b079-9dc8a2f53a48
Ntim, Collins G.
1f344edc-8005-4e96-8972-d56c4dade46b
Vithana, Krishanthi, Soobaroyen, Teerooven and Ntim, Collins G.
(2019)
Human resource disclosures in UK corporate annual reports: To what extent do these reflect organisational priorities towards labour?
Journal of Business Ethics, 0, .
(doi:10.1007/s10551-019-04289-3).
Abstract
Our study analyses the nature, quality and extent of human resource disclosures (HRDs) of UK Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 firms by relying on a novel disclosure index measuring the depth and breadth of disclosures. Contextually, we focus on the five-year period following the then Labour government’s attempts to encourage firms to formally report on their human resource management practices and to foster deeper employer-employee engagement. First, we evaluate the degree to which companies report comprehensively (or substantively) on a number of HRD items that we classify as “procedural” or “sustainable.” Second, we hypothesise that a company’s employee relation ideology (using a proxy to measure a company’s level of “unitarism”) is positively associated with HRD. Our results indicate that: (i) whilst there has been an increase in the breadth of HRD in terms of procedural and sustainable items being disclosed, the evolution towards a more comprehensive and in-depth form of HRD remains rather limited; and (ii) there is a positive association between a company’s employee relation ideology (unitarism) and the level of HRD. Theoretically, we conceive of HRD both as a reflection of an organisation’s orientation towards a key stakeholder (unitarist relations with labour) and a legitimacy seeking exercise at a time of changing societal conditions. We contribute to the scant literature on the extent and determinants of HRD since prior research tends to subsume employee-related disclosures within the broader concept of social, ethical or intellectual capital disclosures. We also propose a disclosure checklist to underpin future HRD research.
Text
Accepted_Manuscript_JBE_16_September_2019
- Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 16 September 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 28 September 2019
Keywords:
Human resource disclosure, Employee relation ideology, Stakeholder theory, Legitimacy theory
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 434462
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434462
ISSN: 0167-4544
PURE UUID: 160a7ca3-fc2a-40f7-bfd1-05b38e589df2
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Date deposited: 24 Sep 2019 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:20
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Author:
Teerooven Soobaroyen
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