Intellectual Capital Disclosure through Annual Reports: A Study of the Swedish Retail Industry

This article is based on a content analysis of intellectual capital (IC) in annual reports from 1998 to 2002. The aim of the study was to compare the content of voluntary information on IC in the corporate annual reports covering a period of 4 years. The results from the study, based on 15 Swedish companies in the retail sector, show that for the year 2002 the information on human capital in the annual reports was, on average, 8.4% of the total text mass, with 14.9% pertaining to external capital, 21.2% to process capital and 7.4% about innovation capital. Further, the amount of IC information in 2002 increased when compared with the amount of information in 1998. The findings indicate that companies dealing with daily goods provide more information about IC in their annual reports than fashion companies.