会计信息披露外文文献翻译

文献出处：Ebimobowei A. A Study of Social Accounting Disclosures in the Annual Reports of Nigerian Companies [J]. Asian Journal of Business Management, 2011, 3(3): 145-151.

原文

A Study of Social Accounting Disclosures in the

Annual Reports of Nigerian Companies

Appah Ebimobowei

Abstract: Social accounting is concerned with the development of measurement system to monitor social performance. It is rational assessment of and disclosure on some meaningful domain of companies’ activities that have social impact. Thi s study examines the practice of social accounting disclosure in Nigerian companies. Forty companies from eight sectors quoted in the Nigerian Stock Exchange were randomly sampled. Data were collected from the annual reports of the companies’ for the perio d 2005 to 2007 and the level of disclosure is measured using content analysis and descriptive analysis. The paper found that 82.5% of the companies sampled present social accounting information in their annual reports. The results show that Nigerian companies prefer to disclose social accounting information in the Directors Report, Chairman’s Statement and Notes to the Accounts in the form of short qualitative information. Human resources, community involvement and environment were identified as the most popular themes. Hence, the paper recommends among others that companies should take social accounting as a moral duty; legislation for all companies to disclose social accounting information in Nigeria; social indicators to be developed at the national level in the area of employment opportunities, environmental control, energy conservation, health care etc and professional accounting bodies in the country should collaborate to expand research in social accounting.

Key words: Annual reports, social accounting, social disclosure, Nigeria

INTRODUCTION

The increasing need for every organization to disclose in their annual reports the various activities that affect the society is becoming a very fundamental issue all over the world mostly in developed economies, but this is not the case in developing countries like Nigeria. This is because organizations are particularly more interested in the profit maximization objective to the detriment of the society. According to Iyoha (2010), in developing countries, the concern is about how efficient organizations are in terms of how much profits are made and how much dividends are paid. No serious thoughts are given to social issues in the annual reports of organizations such as environmental protection, energy savings, fair business practice, and community involvements etc. Asechemie (1996) stress that the absence of financial data relating to actions and arrangements for social concern in Nigeria is not in accord with the trend in the USA, Europe and Canada where companies are required to report on the effect of compliance with laws governing corporate social conduct on capital expenditures, earnings and competitive position.

The objective of this paper is to examine the social accounting disclosures in the annual reports of Nigerian companies. Therefore, the content of annual reports must provide information to users relating to social factors. As Mathews (2002) suggested in his study, documenting and analyzing what is disclosed in the area of social accounting should be one of the feature of corporate social reporting. Hence, this study attempts to answer two main questions: (i) what are the most popular types of social accounting and how is social accounting disclosed in the annual reports of companies in Nigeria and (ii) where is the location of presentation of social accounting in the annual reports of companies in Nigeria. To achieve this objective, the paper is divided into five sections. The next section discusses the theoretical and empirical literatures adopted for the study. Section three examines the methodology of the study; section four examines the findings and discussions while the last section deals with the conclusion and recommendations.

Theories on corporate social accounting disclosure behavior:Gray et al. (1995) in Orij (2007) provided a much cited categorization of social accounting

disclosure studies. They talked about three broad classifications of decision usefulness studies, economic theory and social and political theory. The decision usefulness generally relates to the usefulness of accounting information, which is social accounting in this case. These studies are of two types, ranking of information on its perceived decision-usefulness in the financial community and investigations of information on effects on share prices. The economic theory studies are a periphery of agency theory and Positive Accounting Theory (PAT) research. The social and political theory focuses on legitimacy theory (LEGT) and stakeholder theory (STAKT). LEGT and STAKT are theories developed out of political economies. They are overlapping perspectives in a political-economic framework. In theoretical term, Guthrie and Parker (1990) also analyse their empirical evidence in relation to a socio-political economy theory of social disclosure and suggest that:

a political economy theory of social disclosure is both viable and may contribute toward our understanding of observed developments in national reporting practices. Corporate social disclosures have appeared to reflect public social priorities, respond to government pressures, accommodate environmental pressures and sectional interests, and protect corporate prerogatives and projected corporate image.

Prior empirical studies: A number of studies have been published on the subject of social accounting disclosure. A number of these rely on content analysis of annual reports. There are several different methods to the analysis of narratives in annual reports. Bettie et al. (2004) distinguish two categories: subjective (analyst ratings) and semi-objective (disclosure index studies, content analysis, readability studies and linguistic analysis). Content analysis has been selected for this study because it has been widely used in the accounting research, particularly in social accounting disclosure studies. Since this is the method of analysis in the present study, we limit our review to these studies. Table 1 summary the methodology, sample and main results of these studies.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Level of social accounting disclosure: Table 2 shows that 33 companies (82.5%) from various industry groupings made social accounting disclosures at least for one

year in their annual reports. Analysis based on industry, showed that chemical and paints, construction and petroleum marketing had 100 percent disclosure of social accounting information. The lowest level of social accounting information was 66.7% contributed by Breweries and conglomerate while companies in the building materials (75%), food/beverages and tobacco (80%), and healthcare (83.3%) level of disclosure from year 2005 to 2007. Therefore, it can be deduced that there is a growing concern for companies reporting social performance in their financial statements.

Form of social accounting disclosure: Table 3 shows that in 2005 75% of the companies disclose social accounting information using narrative/pictures and 25% disclose with monetary formats. The year 2006 81% used narrative and 19% used monetary format while in 2007 84% used narrative and 16% monetary format. However, there were also companies that used both narrative and monetary formats of disclosure. Many companies were also found to have used the monetary format to disclose human resource information and environmental contribution primarily related to retirement benefit, training and development and some community based projects such as adopting school, scholarships and donations.

Location of social accounting disclosure: Table 4 shows that 4(12.12%) of the sampled companies (Appendix) disclose social accounting information in the chairman’s statement; 17(51.52%) disclose social accounting information in the directors report; 2(6.06%) in the statement of accounting policy; 10(30.30%) in the notes to the accounts. The paper discovers that Directors report is the most popular location where social accounting information is disclosed by companies in Nigeria and also the “notes to the accounts”. This result is also consistent with Mamman (2004) study that Directors report is the most preferred location of social accounting information.

Quantification of amount of social accounting disclosure:This study used only number of disclosure as the approach of capturing data through content analysis. Almost all companies disclosed social accounting information in short qualitative discussion and some have extended qualitative discussion where they have sections to disclose the social accounting information especially on human resources and

community based projects.

Trend of social accounting disclosure: Table 5 shows the trend of social accounting disclosures in Nigeria. Twelve (12) companies representing (36.36%) reveals that human resources is the trend of social accounting disclosure in the annual report; two companies representing (6.06%) says the trend is fair business practice; nine (9) companies representing (27.27%) suggests community development; three (3) companies representing (9.09%) reveals that the trend of social accounting is energy; five (5) companies representing (15.16%) in their annual reports disclosed that the trend is on the environment; and two (2) companies representing (6.06%) disclosed in their annual reports that the trends is on the organization’s products. The analysis therefore reveals that disclosure of social and environmental activities is specifically on the discretion of the companies.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

The study examined social accounting disclosure for a three-year period from 2005 to 2007. The type of social accounting disclosure, form and location were identified in the annual reports of 40 companies. This covers eight sectors of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The study found that 82.5% of Nigerian Companies disclose one type or the other of social accounting information in their annual reports. These disclosures were voluntary in nature and largely qualitative; contrary to the developed and some developing countries. The most favoured places of disclosure are in the Directors Report, Chairman’s Statement and Notes to the account. The most popular theme that most companies disclose is human resources followed by community involvement and environment. Analysis done by industry found that the petroleum marketing, food/beverages and tobacco, chemicals and paints sectors provides a higher percentage of social accounting disclosure in Nigeria. Therefore, on the basis of the conclusion above, the following suggestions are provided by the researcher to improve the social accounting practice in Nigeria:

﹒Companies should take social accounting disclosure as their moral duty; mere legislation would not solve the problem.

﹒The government should provide some incentives like differentials in tax treatment, subsidies, rebates etc. so that companies can take social programmes.

﹒Researchers should provide the basis and means of social accounting quantification as far as possible.

﹒The government should put in place suitable legislation for all companies to compel them to make adequate disclosure of their activities to the society.

﹒Professional institutes in the country like the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria should work together for developing social accounting and reporting techniques.

﹒Social indicators should be developed at the national level in the areas of employment opportunities, environmental control, energy conservation, health education etc.

译文

会计信息披露，尼日利亚公司年度报告的实证研究

阿帕·艾比莫泊威

摘要：会计信息披露关系到对社会绩效监督的评估系统的发展。合理的评估和会计信息披露对公司在某些领域的社会活动有一定意义的影响。本文研究了社会会计信息披露在尼日利亚公司的做法。对尼日利亚证券交易所的八大行业的四十家公司进行随机抽样。数据收集来源于这些公司在2005年至2007年期间的年度报告，对这些公司的会计信息披露水平的评估使用的是内容分析和描述性分析法。本文的研究发现，82.5%的样本公司在在他们的年度报告中提到了公司的相关会计信息。结果表明，尼日利亚公司倾向于在他们的董事会报告中进行社会会计信息披露，董事会主席对公司的会计信息以简短的文字信息进行声明和备注。人力资源、社区参与和环境等信息披露被认为是最受欢迎的主题内容，但是对于公司的会计信息披露则很不足。因此，本文建议公司应该采取措施，担负起社会会计道德责任，积极对公司的会计信息进行披露；在尼日利亚，立法保障所有公司的社会会计信息披露行为；对公司完成的一些社会指标，比如：就业机会、环境控制、节能、卫生保健等信息进行披露，以及和专业的会计机构进行广泛的合作。

关键词：年度报告；社会会计；会计信息披露；尼日利亚

引言

随着对每个组织年报信息披露需求的不断增长，这一对社会的影响活动已经成为全世界的一个非常基本的问题，特别是在发达国家，但发展中国家的情况就并非能做到积极披露公司的会计信息，比如：尼日利亚。这是因为组织尤其更感兴趣的是利润最大化目标，而不是对社会的损害。根据埃尤哈在2010年的研究，在发展中国家，对于企业组织而言，更多关注的是如何有效的获得利润和支付多少股息。公司的年度报告对于组织环保、节能、公平的商业惯例和社区关系等社会问题缺乏关注。阿瑟科密(1996)强调，在尼日利亚存在的对财务数据缺乏相关操作和安排，这一社会问题并不会是美国、欧洲和加拿大等地方的公司的趋势。这些国家的公司都被要求在年度报告中，报告资本支出,收入和竞争地位，以及公司活动对社会的影响。

本文的研究目的就是研究尼日利亚公司的年度报告中的社会会计信息披露情况。因此，年度报告的内容必须为用户提供公司活动设计到的社会因素等信息。就如马修斯(2002) 在他的研究中所建议的，记录和分析对披露社会会计信息的披露，应该包含哪些内容。因此，本研究试图回答两个主要问题: (1) 在尼日利亚公司，哪些会计信息内容是这些公司最喜欢披露的以及年报中是如何对社会会计信息进行披露的；(2)在尼日利亚公司的年度报告中，企业会计信息披露位于哪个位置。为了实现这个目标，本文将分为五个部分进行讨论。下一节将讨论这项研究的理论基础和实证文献分析；第三部分则阐述了研究方法；第四部分则阐述了研究结果和讨论；最后一节是研究结论和建议。

理论和实证文献

企业社会会计信息披露行为的相关理论：格雷(1995)和奥利(2007)提供了一种关于社会会计信息披露分类的多种引用方法。他们探讨了决策有用性研究的三大分类，即经济理论、社会理论和政治理论。在社会会计的大环境之下，决策的有用性通常会涉及到会计信息的有用性。这些研究有两种类型,其感知决策信息有用性的排名位居金融界之上，并能调查信息对股票价格的影响。经济理论研究是代理理论和实证性会计理论(PAT)研究的外围研究。社会和政治理论关注合法

性理论(LEGT)和利益相关者理论(STAKT)。合法性理论和利益相关者理论是一种发展政治经济学的理论。在一个政治经济框架内，它们有重合的观点。用一种理论术语来讲，格思里和帕克(1990)分析了关于社会信息披露的社会政治经济理论实证性证据并提出下列建议：

社会信息披露的政治经济理论都是可行的，并可能有助于我们理解观察国家发展的实践报告。企业社会信息披露开始反映公共社会重点,应对政府压力,适应环境压力和部门利益,以及保护企业特权和预测企业形象。

之前的实证研究:许多有关社会会计信息披露主题的研究已经发表。其中大多数都依赖于年度报告的相关内容分析。年度报告的叙述方法各种各样。贝蒂(2004)将其分为两类:主观的(分析师评级)和半客观的(信息披露指数研究、内容分析、可读性研究和语言分析)。本研究选用的是内容分析的方法,因为它已经在会计研究中被广泛应用,特别是社会会计信息披露的研究。表1总结了这些研究的方法、样本和主要结果。

结果与讨论

社会会计信息披露的水平：表2表明，33家(82.5%)来自不同行业的组织在他们的年度报告中，至少进行了一年的社会会计信息披露。基于行业分析显示，化学制品和油漆、建筑和石油市场有100%的社会会计信息披露。社会会计信息水平最低的66.7%来自于啤酒厂和大型联合企业，从2005年到2007年的披露水平中，建筑材料为(75%)、食品/饮料和烟草(80%)、医疗保健(83.3%)。因此,可以推断,越来越多的公司开始关心财务报告中的社会绩效。

社会会计信息披露的形式:表3显示,2005年，75%的公司使用叙事/图片的形式披露社会会计信息，也有25%的公司采用货币的形式。2006年，81%的公司采用叙事的形式，19%的公司采用货币形式,而2007年，84%的公司采用叙事形式，16%的公司采用货币形式。然而,也有公司采用叙事和货币相结合的形式披露会计信息。许多公司也发现，使用货币形式披露人力资源相关信息和环境信息的贡献主要在于退休福利、培训和发展，以及一些社区项目如捐助学校建设、奖学金和其他捐款等。

社会会计披露的位置:表4显示,4个(12.12%)抽样公司在董事声明中披露社会会计信息;（完整译文请到百度文库）17个(51.52%)在董事会报告中披露社会