This study suggests an alternative to confirmatory content analysis (CA) and empirically demonstrates that explorative CA enables new insights into the mechanism of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure. In so doing, this research contributes to both methodological and empirical advancements in IC disclosure research.,Employing the assumptions of positive accounting theory and taking book value of intangible assets as a reference, our research design utilizes well-established text-mining (TM) tools based on a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression. We assume that the degree of cohesion between officially disclosed and evaluated intangible assets on balance sheets and those contextually delivered in narrative form may affect how IC is ultimately disclosed in annual reports.,Our main finding is in line with the results and criticism of previous studies. We show that companies do not extensively disclose IC in their annual reports. However, some narrative forms for IC disclosure are identified and confirmed by several robustness checks.,First, the findings provide internal validity only for large US enterprises. These firms have similar, well-structured reporting requirements. This analysis might be enriched by an examination and a comparison of different institutional contexts, such as emerging countries. Second, following previous studies, annual reports serve as the source of data. Consequently, the findings are relevant only for mandatory and voluntary disclosure of IC, mitigating the relevance of this study for contexts of involuntary disclosure.,This study makes two contributions. First, we add to the empirical literature by offering one more piece of evidence on whether and, if so, the extent to which companies disclose IC in their annual reports. Second, we provide further examination of confirmatory CA by proposing a number of statistically validated codes and tokens that are indicators of IC communication by companies.

中文翻译：

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公司是否在年度报告中披露智力资本？探索性内容分析的新证据

这项研究提出了验证性内容分析（CA）的替代方法，并从经验上证明了探索性CA可以为智力资本（IC）披露机制提供新见解。这样，这项研究有助于IC披露研究的方法和经验上的进步。利用正会计理论的假设并以无形资产的账面价值为参考，我们的研究设计利用了完善的文本挖掘（TM）基于最小绝对收缩和选择算子回归的工具。我们假设资产负债表上正式披露和评估的无形资产与以叙述形式在上下文中传递的无形资产之间的凝聚力程度可能会影响IC在最终年度报告中的最终披露方式。我们的主要发现与先前研究的结果和批评一致。我们表明，公司没有在其年度报告中广泛披露IC。然而，IC披露的一些叙述形式已通过几次稳健性检查得到确认和确认。首先，研究结果仅对美国大型企业提供内部有效性。这些公司具有相似的，结构合理的报告要求。可以通过对新兴国家等不同制度背景进行考察和比较来丰富这种分析。其次，根据先前的研究，年度报告是数据的来源。因此，研究结果仅与强制性和自愿性披露IC有关，从而减轻了本研究与非自愿披露背景的相关性。本研究有两个贡献。第一，我们通过提供更多证据来证明公司是否在年度报告中披露IC，以及在多大程度上披露了IC，从而增加了经验文献。其次，我们通过提出一些经过统计验证的代码和令牌来进一步验证验证性CA，这些代码和令牌是公司进行IC通信的指标。