Evidence of intellectual capital in the Integrated Report of brazilian companies participating in an international pilot program

Abstract

In view of the growing demand for responsible use of resources, corporate communication, through the Integrated Reporting (IR), advances in the search for information effectiveness, integrating different contents to show how the organization creates value, in clear, lean and useful language to users. Thus, this research aims to analyze how intellectual capital (CI) is being evidenced in the IR of Brazilian companies participating in the pilot program of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), under the principles of connectivity, completeness, conciseness and coherence. Methodologically, it is a qualitative research, carried out through content analysis of information collected in 21 Integrated Reports of seven Brazilian companies, in the period from 2016 to 2018. The results showed connectivity of information from the report itself in all companies, but fail in connection to specific reports (Financial, Sustainability, Corporate Governance and Management); in terms of completeness, the reports are complete, with exceptions in different monetary values ​​for each type of investment; regarding conciseness, there are divergences in the representativeness of intellectual capital in relation to the total information disclosed; in relation to coherence, all presented consistency in the information disclosed in relation to previous years, but only two companies project intellectual capital in the future. We conclude that all reports met the expected basic disclosure requirements, and describe intellectual capital in a less quantitative (monetary) and more qualitative way, although some are more dispersed than others, requiring greater interaction with other reports of the organization, in addition to the need to highlight future plans for managing intellectual capital.