The afternoon Plenary Session was focused on the Integrated Reporting and involved Ian Ball and Yasuhito Hanado.

Transcription

1 Report on the 10th Interdisciplinary EIASM Workshop on Intangibles, Intellectual Capital and Extra-Financial Information, University of Ferrara (Italy), September 2014 From 18 to 19 September 2014, the 10th Interdisciplinary EIASM Workshop on Intangibles, Intellectual Capital and Extra-Financial Information took place at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara, Italy. After 9 years in which the event was held in different European countries, the Workshop moved back to the University of Ferrara, where the first edition was organized in 2005, for celebrating the 10th anniversary. As previously, also this year the Workshop has been organized by Stefano Zambon (University of Ferrara), who could welcome in Ferrara almost 100 delegates, including many well-known scholars from around the world. In total, 54 papers concerning intangibles, intellectual capital and extra-financial information were presented, the acceptance rate of papers being about 65 per cent. Eighteen Parallel Sessions and four Special Panels on relevant and emerging topics (i.e. Controlling Intangibles and Innovation ; Intangibles: Measurement and Risk(s) ; A Special Intangible: The Business Model ; Beyond Firms: Intangibles at Meso, Macro and Territorial Level ) took place during the two days of the Workshop. Besides Stefano Zambon, the event welcomed also other important key-note speakers from different continents, who delivered their speeches over three plenary sessions: Baruch Lev (New York University), Ian Ball (International Integrated Reporting Council IIRC), Yasuhito Hanado (Waseda University, Tokyo), and John Dumay (Macquarie University, Sidney). Stefano Zambon opened the Workshop with an Inaugural Plenary Session, in which he discussed, together with Baruch Lev, the today s role of intangibles and intellectual capital and the related research issues. As he said, if ten years ago the aim was the need for legitimization, nowadays this topic faces a clear academic interest, and the development of relevant corporate, professional and institutional advances highlights this; furthermore, several initiatives and experiences directed to enhance and single out the role of intangibles, have been carried out in the last ten years. He also detected a series of unresolved issues that would require attention from the academics, such as the scarce adoption of intangibles measurement in companies or the reporting activity for either internal or external managerial purposes. Due to this greater focus on intangibles, Zambon asserted that the challenge has changed: as a system that relies on these assets is both stronger and more vulnerable, the challenge we all face is to understand and to learn how to manage, measure and report in this intangibles-based environment. Baruch Lev focused his speech on the limited impact of the IC disclosure, which is one of the main topics research has undertaken. He claimed that managers, inventors and policymakers are more interested in value creation than reporting intangibles: focusing on rare and inimitable strategic resources for the generation of a competitive advantage would better fit organizations interests. For this reason, he suggested academics to concentrate their research on new and more stimulating issues related to the management of IC which are more difficult to explore, but also more rewarding because they may raise the interest of a large group of stakeholders.

2 The afternoon Plenary Session was focused on the Integrated Reporting and involved Ian Ball and Yasuhito Hanado. The contribution of Ian Ball regarded the development of an International <IR> Framework by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). The Framework proposed should consist of three main parts: fundamental concepts, guiding principles and content elements. He reported the first one to be linked to the value creation process and to those inputs, involving also intangible assets (intellectual capital, human resources and relations), which become tangible and intangible outputs through the business model. The second one concerns the main topics that have to be taken into account in order to develop the Framework, i.e. strategic focus, connectivity of information, relationships with stakeholders, reliability, completeness and comparability. The third part involves all those elements that can affect the organization and its value creation processes, such as governance, business model, strategy, the environment, and so on. After an overview of the <IR> adoption in the world, Ball deepened the role of intangibles in this model, as well as its theoretical background, its potential regulation and its possible application to the public sector. Yasuhito Hanado talked about the 10-year long experience in Japan on the Intellectual Assets Based Management (IAbM), which has been developing as a new business and managerial model to respond to the so-called lost decade in that country and to build up a new disclosure system for Open Innovation, coherently with the Business Reporting Framework put forward by the World Intellectual Capital/Assets Initiative (WICI). Then, Hanado focused on the WICI activities and the role of Japan therein, and proposed some points of discussion for the future improvement of business reporting which relate, amid others, to the use of intangibles as main source of competitiveness, the identification of unique assets and the value creation process, the enhancement of the disclosure of data to stakeholders, and the reduction of reporting costs. Finally, he discussed the role of connectivity of information for the development of business and <IR> reporting. As aforementioned, in addition to the Parallel Sessions, the Workshop held 4 Special Panels which aimed to discuss critical issues for the future of the research on intangibles. Twenty speakers were involved in these Panels, both from academia and companies. During the Workshop dinner, which took place in the beautiful medieval scenario of Ferrara city center, all the participants could enjoy the traditional Italian cuisine and take part in the 10th anniversary party, with a special giant cake celebrating the occasion. Prof. Lev delivered a touching speech on the Workshop series, its constitutive role for the intangibles academic community, and the work of its coordinator. On the following day, paper authors continued to contribute to the discussion on IC and intangibles. The Conclusive Plenary Session was run by Stefano Zambon and John Dumay, who entered in the debate on the future of IC in a critical perspective. Concentrating on the meaning of value and pointing out the largely elusive efforts that academics make to link it to the disclosure of intangible resources, Dumay reported the words of Prof. Aino Kianto, who asserted that IC is not being practiced by managers far as much as it is being preached by us academics. In this sense, he purported the view that the era of IC reporting is finished, especially because companies appear to be completely uninterested in intangibles disclosure. Dumay draw to a different direction, based on the idea that nowadays the attention is taken by the Integrated Reporting, warning though that it could also turn out to be another failure.

3 As a consequence, he strongly advised researchers to develop a third wave of Intellectual Capital research and even a fourth one, which should position IC within a sustainable system. After thanking Mrs. Nicole Coopman of EIASM and her colleagues for their precious collaboration, Stefano Zambon reminded that the Journal of Intellectual Capital will host a Special Issue dedicated to the event, whose submission deadline for papers is November 15th, As per tradition, the final act of the Workshop has been the conferment of the Best Junior Contribution to the Intangibles and IC Theory and Practice Awards, that have been co-attributed to Gaia Melloni (University of Verona) for the paper Intellectual Capital Disclosure in the Integrated Reporting: An Impression Management Analysis and to Christina Manthei and Wolfgang Schultze (Augsburg University) for the paper Conservatism And Endogenous Preferences: An Experimental Approach. Co-runners up have been Fabio Landini (Bocconi University, Milan), Alessandro Arrighetti (University of Parma) and Andrea Lasagni (University of Parma) for the paper Intangible Assets Dynamics and Firm Behaviour, and Federica Doni (University of Milano-Bicocca) and Andrea Gasperini (Wici Italy and Aiaf) for the paper Integrated Reporting and the Value Relevance of Non-Financial Information: Empirical Evidence From South Africa. Conclusively, Sandra Cohen (Athens University of Economics and Business) presented the 11 th edition of the Workshop that will be held in Athens on September 2015, and illustrated the main attractive features of the next event. On 2016 the 12 th edition of the event will be held in Russia at the Higher School of Economics. Chiara Oppi and Emidia Vagnoni Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara

4 Audience at the Inaugural Plenary Session Prof. Baruch Lev at the Inaugural Plenary Session

5 Special Panel on Controlling Intangibles and Innovation. From left: E. Vagnoni (Univ. of Ferrara), M.S. Chiucchi (Polytechnic Univ. of Marche), and R. Obermaier (Univ. of Passau). Out of the picture: M. Skoog (Stockholm Business School).

6 Special Panel on Intangibles: Measurement and Risk(s). From left: T. Fisher (Erlangen- Nuremberg Univ.), A. Gorius (Solvay Group), G. Marzo (Univ. of Ferrara), B. Lev (Stern, NYU), and M. Schwaiger (LMU, Munich)

7 Special Panel on Business Model in the frescoed room. From left: L. Girella (Univ. Ca Foscari of Venice), J. Dumay (Macquarie Univ., Sydney), L. Cinquini (Higher School Sant Anna of Pisa), C. Bagnoli (Univ. Ca Foscari of Venice), and C. Nielsen (Aalborg Univ.)

8 A moment of intense discussion in the Special Panel on Business Model

9 Afternoon Plenary Session. From left: Dr Ian Ball (IIRC) and Emeritus Prof. Yasuhito Hanado (Waseda University, Tokyo)

10 Celebrative Speech at Workshop dinner in a medieval courtyard by Prof. Baruch Lev (NYU)

11 Associate Professor John Dumay s speech at the Conclusive Plenary Session

12 The conferment of the Best Junior Contribution to the Intangibles and IC Theory and Practice Awards. From left: J. Dumay (Macquarie Univ., Sydney), co-runner up F. Doni (Univ. of Milan Bicocca), co-winner Christina Manthei (Univ. of Augsburg), co-winner G. Melloni (Univ. of Verona), and S. Zambon (Workshop Coordinator). Missing co-runners up F. Landini (Bocconi Univ., Milan), A. Arrighetti (Univ. of Parma) and A. Lasagni (Univ. of Parma).