A stakeholder analysis of employee disclosures in annual reports

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 analyse 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 and economic performance measured by profit per employee.