Human capital reporting in a developing nation

In recent years, a management trend has been the introduction of ‘human capital management and accounting’. As a result of this trend, a demand for different information has been created, and many organisations have therefore had to become more involved in the creation, measurement and reporting of information other than simply ‘financial’ information. Olsson (2001) has demonstrated an increase in Human Capital (HC) disclosures in annual reports and an increased emphasis on HC management within organisations. Using the method of content analysis, this paper reports on a sample of HC reporting practices taken from a number of organisations in Sri Lanka (a developing nation). Specifically, it seeks first to examine the disclosure patterns of HC reporting (HCR) and second to ascertain to what extent a number of variables (e.g. size, industry sector) explain the differences in disclosure patterns between Sri Lanka and the developed nations.