An Empirical Study of Condensed, Summarized, and Excerpted Accounting Reports on the Corporate Websites of U.S. Companies

摘要

This study examined the impact of the internet on the publication of accounting reports that do not comply with the principles of full disclosure. The data are obtained by reviewing the accounting reports on the websites of 47 publicly traded U. S. companies. The content, organization and structure of reports on the websites are examined and categorized as full disclosure or non-full disclosure. The study shows that all websites sampled contained some non-full disclosure accounting reports. Many sites contained a considerable number of such reports. These results indicated that the use of excerpts, summary, and condensed reports by public companies is widespread and appears with much greater regularity than in the paper-only era. The study is important since it documents the extent that U.S. companies distribute accounting reports that fail to meet full disclosure standards. The incidence rates in the study are useful for current regulatory purposes as well as future research that wish to gauge changes over time.