Content and Determinants of Intellectual Capital Disclosure: Evidence from Annual Reports of the Jordanian Industrial Public Listed Companies
Radhi Al-Hamadeen, Mishiel Suwaidan

Abstract
This study investigates the Intellectual Capital (IC) voluntary disclosures. Limited attention is given to examine IC practices of the business entities in the developing countries (including Jordan). Specifically, this paper documents the practices by the large industrial Jordanian firms when disclosing information related to IC and to what extent they do report such non-financial information in their annual reports. Based on relevant literature (namely, Edvinsson and Malone, 1997; and Johnson, 1999), we apply a research index on 60 publicly listed companies classified under the industrial sector at Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). Our findings suggest that information about the intellectual capital has been extensively disclosed by the industrial companies in Jordan. Up to 59% of the hypothesized IC disclosure items were found in the annual reports of the study sample. The evidence reported in this study reveals that human capital is the most disclosed aspect among all three investigated components of IC (i.e. human, internal, and external capital). Unsurprisingly, the multivariate cross-sectional regression analysis reveal size and ownership concentration have the highest explanatory power since that larger companies with greater concentration in their ownership tend to disclose more information about their intellectual capital.

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