The purpose of this project is to investigate the renewed accounting regulation through the European Union Directive 95/2014 on non-financial and diversity information (EU Directive) defining its features, impacts and implications in the European scenario also in the light of the strategic role of intangibles and digitalization processes. The EU Directive is drawing several changes especially for practices, investors and companies and in terms of corporate accountability. In this perspective, we intend to discover strong and weak points of accounting regulation on non-financial information identifying its impact in a revolutionary way: is it a "TOrnado" or "SUnshine" accountability model?. Investigating how sustainable information provided by public (and private) companies to stakeholders changes after the adoption of the EU Directive and which are emerging insights supporting the relationships with stakeholders, this project aims to propose a pro-active and integrated model of corporate accountability as well as several improvements pillars of the accounting regulation of non-financial information aiming at harmonization. The project development is based on qualitative and quantitative methods adopting several research approaches. A key point is a comparison among European countries and European-USA countries even if the first analysis is developed around the EU Directive and its impact in the Italian scenario through the adoption of the Legislative Decree 254/2016. This project is novel because it provides how the EU Directive on non-financial and diversity information is adopted by large public companies (and also private companies) assessing the impact on the corporate accountability and transparency in several countries starting from the Italian scenario. Our evidence contributes to several theoretical (academic) and practical (practitioners and policymakers) issues showing how external pressures originated by the EU Directive's adoption affected companies.
As the research project will be directed to develop a strong discourse and evidence of how the accounting regulation is changed after the introduction of non-financial information defining changes in corporate accountability and implications for the organizations, investors & regulators/standards setters, it is manly novel for the following reasons:
- It maps the state of the art in the European scenario;
- It compares the state of the art in the European scenario with the USA scenario, drafting major best practices to acquire guaranteeing knowledge transfer towards stakeholders and for the value creation improving competitiveness;
- It provides evidence on how the EU Directive is adopted by large (and private) public companies in the European scenario and which is the emerging model guaranteeing transparency and stakeholders engagement through knowledge sharing;
- It collects innovative data and information assessing if recent changes in European accounting regulation are transposed in a "TOrnado" or "SUnshine" accountability model established by companies operating in the complex ecosystem and fostering long timing vision's strategy and increasing competitiveness. In the same way, it provides best practices, tools, new principles and tipping points to adjust regulations supporting policymakers, standard setters and regulators;
- It verifies the strategic value of intangibles and their increasing relevance for organizations in creating value. Additionally, the digitalization process is tested to improve trust and transparency in accounting and non-financial information;
- It provides a set of implications useful for the normative improvement by governments also recognizing institutional pressures to improve corporate accountability and transparency fostering international harmonization.
Thus, starting from the theoretical background, the project is directed to affirm in the national and international context strong evidence. The advances of the state of the art origins from activities we're planning to develop and novelty previously recognized. Our advances are mainly directed to supports companies in improving corporate accountability and transparency drafting best practices and emerging models. Additionally, our evidence will be directed to support regulations renewal providing principles and implications from our mapping and studying of the impact of EU Directive in several countries.