Determining the factors influencing the voluntary disclosure of non-financial information from the perspective of institutional theory Qualitative method

Subject Areas :

Ali  Khodabakhshi ¹ (Accounting department Humanities factualy I slamic Azad univercity Isfahan(Khurasgan) Isfahan Iran)
Mohsen  Dastgir ² (Accounting department Human resources factualy I slamic Azad univercity Isfahan(Khurasgan) Isfahan Iran)
Saeid  Aliahmadi ³ (Accounting department Humanities factualy I slamic Azad univercity Isfahan(Khurasgan) Isfahan Iran)

Received: 2023-09-28 Accepted : 2023-12-10 Published : 2024-02-20

Keywords: Voluntary Disclosure, Delphi method, Institutional theory, non-financial information,   determination of effective components, resource review method,

Abstract :

Company reports are one of the most important sources of obtaining information, so that the theoretical foundations of accounting and reporting in most countries state that the general purpose of company reporting is to provide information. The purpose of this research is to determine the factors influencing the voluntary disclosure of non-financial information from the perspective of institutional theory. In this research, a qualitative research method has been used, which is a combination of resource review and Delphi method, at first it was used by using the resource review method and background studies, the factors affecting information disclosure were identified with the approach of voluntary disclosure of non-financial information, then to The categories of identified factors were discussed. In order to determine the factors affecting the voluntary disclosure of information, the Delphi method has been used.The statistical population of the present study were accounting specialists and experts who are experts in accounting and auditing, who were 20 people (10 academic and 10 executive) and were selected as a snowball. The findings of the resource review section showed that 33 indicators were identified and finally the known concepts were categorized into five groups. The desired indicators were included in the Delphi questionnaire through the literature review while presenting to the experts after the initial content validity and 17 out of 20 people They confirmed the indicators and the validity percentage was 85%, so the validity of the model was confirmed through the Delphi method.The results show that in three groups; 1) Involuntary factors and voluntary disclosure of non-financial information; 2) specific discretionary factors of the company and voluntary disclosure of non-financial information; 3) Normative factors and voluntary disclosure of non-financial information, 25 indicators were confirmed.