Intangibles disclosure in Management Commentary regulation in Germany and Italy : A semantic approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand whether Management Commentary (MC) can cover the information needs about underreported company intangibles in accounting traditionalist countries such as Germany and Italy. Furthermore, this work would like to contribute towards an improvement of the managerial culture on intangible resources disclosure and to stimulate the consciousness of the need for a new regulatory policy in accounting. Design/methodology/approach – Focusing on the current regulation on MC and taking into account its hard and soft components, both in Italy and in Germany, we have carried out a semantic analysis together with a manual content one so to find out and to compare specifications for intangibles related disclosure in MC. The authors have decided to follow a semantic approach because of the different languages of the analysed documents, that in any case need to be considered under a cultural perspective of provenience, trying to give more effectiveness to the cross comparison. Findings – The results have shown that just a part of the intangibles is covered by the regulations of MC and that Germany and Italy follow, mainly, the same approach to MC. Practical implications – The findings highlight the similarities and differences between what the authors need to report on intangibles according to specifications in Italy and Germany. Originality/value – The authors reveal the approach that a country with rather conservative accounting can follow balancing regulatory approach and needs to disclose information about intangibles without a specific report on that. The authors identify the need for a new policy that can enable the development of intangibles disclosure culture.