Theoretical aspects of intangibles and intellectual capital disclosure through the main frameworks of integrated reporting and non-financial information

Intellectual capital (IC) has been debated for decades from theoretical and practical perspectives. By analyzing the evolution of the IC discourse, it is possible to notice that both scholars and practitioners have proposed a plethora of IC concepts (Chaminade and Roberts 2003; Mouritsen et al. 2001; Stewart 1997) and reporting frameworks (Andriessen 2004; Sveiby 2010) none of which can be considered as generally accepted. This situation has implied that each company has defined its own specific IC reporting agenda according to its specific purposes (Abeysekera 2008; Sveiby 2010). Recently, the issues related to intangibles have moved from the IC domain to other domains related to non-financial disclosure, such as the sustainability reporting one and the Integrated Reporting (IR) one. Here, intangibles continue to play a primary role but instead of being approached on a stand-alone basis they are approached together with the other business "capitals" such as the financial, the physical or the natural one (de Villiers and Sharma 2017). This chapter aims to analyse the theoretical aspects of intangibles and intellectual capital disclosure through the main frameworks of integrated reporting and non-financial information.