The Quality Evaluation of Non-Financial Information Disclosure on GRI Standards by Russian Companies

Abstract:

The non-financial information is defined as a significant determinant of the company’s activity in terms of many modern theories. The evolution of the company’s investment attractiveness evaluating theory has led to the conclusion that the determining factors include other non-financial characteristics of the company, such as management structure, degree of social and environmental responsibility and personnel management policies. The development of neo-institutional theory suggests that organizations tend to disclose non-financial information as a response to the challenges of the institutional environment. A significant methodological problem is the determination of the disclosure of non-financial information quality, which allows companies to be ranked from the perspective of potential investment opportunities in the approach. The purpose of this research was to develop an approach to assessing compliance of non-financial information disclosure by Russian companies with international GRI standards. To achieve the goal, the authors proposed an index characterizing the quality of the non-financial information disclosure, based on the use of “bag-of-words” and the construction of an author’s dictionary of economic non- financial terms. The proposed index supplements the existing theories that consider the importance of company’s non-financial determinants, in terms of the methodology development for determining the quality of non-financial information, and also allows us to identify trends and possibilities of applying foreign standards by Russian companies.

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