Introduction

I am delighted to introduce this 13th issue of International Accounting Policy Forum (IAPF) – the annual special issue of Accounting and Business Research. Four of the academic papers in this issue were commissioned for the 2017 ICAEW Information for Better Markets Conference. The papers address the question Corporate reporting: is it heading in the right direction? which was selected as the conference theme in light of major changes to corporate reporting that have taken place in recent decades. Not only have there been significant changes in accounting standards, including the adoption of IFRS in many countries, but there has also been an explosion of narrative reporting and increased attention to reporting on business’s impact on society and on the natural world. At the same time, the way in which information is communicated in most areas of life has changed radically, and so it is right to ask whether the communication of corporate reporting information also needs to change radically. Baruch Lev’s paper offers a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about whether financial reporting continues to retain its relevance for investors. Annual reports have little impact on share prices. Some people cite this as evidence that the business reporting system is working well. Others argue that it indicates the current approach is failing with companies reporting information that does not reflect their business models or capture the drivers of business value. Lev’s paper, The deteriorating usefulness of financial report information and how to reverse it, firmly endorses the latter view and criticises the adoption of a balance sheet approach and failure to recognise the value of intangible assets in financial statements. Jeffrey Unerman, and co-authors Jan Bebbington and Brendan O’Dwyer, provide important insights into economic externalities in their paper, Corporate reporting and accounting for externalities. The paper includes a comparison of the principal qualitative characteristics of externalities information in some of the more prominent reporting frameworks. Bringing the frameworks together in this way is effective in highlighting some of the key issues with externalities accounting and reporting. Also worthy of note in the paper is a continuum that sets out how over time externalities can be internalised. In The expansion of non-financial reporting: An exploratory study, Hervé Stolowy and coauthor, Luc Paugam, investigate what is arguably the most dramatic change in corporate reporting