An Empirical Study on the Use and User’s Perception of Narrative Disclosures in Corporate Annual Report

Abstract

Narrative disclosure in corporate annual report consists of information both mandatory and voluntary in nature and includes financial and non-financial information. They includes general narratives, management discussion and analysis, information related to product, production and marketing, financial statement narratives, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, human resources and environmental aspects, but the question is who are the users of such information? What are their uses and how they views narrative reporting in corporate annual report? The present study made an attempt to understand the use and user’s perception of corporate narrative reporting. The result reveals that corporate annual report is the most preferred sources for fetching corporate information and they believe that corporate narrative outlets are used by the executives to boost the image of the company.