英语论文网

atory framework. There is also a general consensus that assurance adds, or has the potential to add, to the (perceived) credibility and quality of sustainability reports. Most respondents believe that assurance contributes to improvements in the operations and risk management of an organization's sustainability practices.

As for the investors in the stock market, they would request for more non-financial information in addition to financial information in order to capture some of the values stemming from intangible assets [Alwert et al., 2009; EFFAS Commission on Intellectual Capital, 2008; Holland and Johanson, 2003; Phillips, 2001; Eccles and Mavrinac, 1995 (as cited in Arvidsson, 2011)]. According to Mavrinac and Siesfeld, portfolio managers regarded that on average 35 per cent of their investment decisions were influenced by non-financial information. One-third of them were of the opinion that increased disclosure of non-financial information should be mandated (as cited in Arvidsson, 2011).

However, the process of issuing mandatory requirements related to intangible assets goes slowly. This is supported by a survey of 388 fund managers and analysts and 80 investor relations officers conducted by Deloitte and others, which shows that half of them believed that consideration of social and environmental performance would become a significantly important aspect of mainstream investment decision within the next three years, and 70% think social and environmental information should be assured by a third-party.

Based on a research performed by Hoff and Wood (2008), reports show that both retail investors and professional investors acknowledged past use of nonfinancial information, and these two groups of investors expect to use such information more in the future. These investors also suggested that auditing and other forms of third-party verification would increase the reliability of non-financial information. This shows that in the eyes of the investors, assurance is necessary to improve the relevance and reliability of non-financial information by organizations.

However, investors may also have skepticism toward the reliability of corporate reporting of non-financial information, which is said to be overwhelmingly positive and not clearly linked to corporate performance. This is in combination with a corporate disclosure regulatory regime, which neither mandates nor sets standards for non-financial reporting. Nevertheless, investors tend to discount non-financial information to the extent that they find it incomparable, unreliable, or not directly material to corporate performance (Hoff & Wood, 2008). ACCA, Accountability & KPMG (2009) also agreed that investors tend to discount the non-financial information.

However, further experiments by Hoff and Wood (2008) revealed that both retail and professional investors did not substantially modify their decision-making when presented with audited or non-audited nonfinancial information. This shows that although interest from corporations in reporting this information clearly exists, it has not yet led to a fully fleshed system of data of use to investors. While investors are incorporating such information in their decision-making, and plan to do more in the future, they have not yet developed a systematic way to incorporate such non-financial information fully into their decision-making process. Companies aide