By enacting the provisions of Directive 2014/95/EU and the Croatian Accounting Act on disclosing non-financial and diversity information, companies of public interest registering 500 and more employees are required to disclose non-financial information. The purpose of this research is to assess the quality of disclosed social information in non-financial/sustainability reports of Croatian companies. The assessment of the social information was grounded on the framework defined by globally accepted sustainability reporting standards by assessing the quality of social subcategories of human rights, labour practice, community/society and product, measured by attributes of relevance, clarity, verifiability, comparability and clarity. With the overall quality score of 13.16 (out of possible 36), the results prove that Croatian companies do disclose certain social information, but the reliability of this information for benchmarking and competitiveness assessment is questionable, as a consensus on the minimum of information to be disclosed as a fundamental requirement for benchmarking has not yet been reached.
Subsequent to the provision of the Directive 2014/95/EU requiring disclosure of non-financial and diversity information of all EU Member States companies with 500 and more employees, a research was conducted at the beginning of 2016 on a sample of sustainability reports disclosed by Croatian companies in 2014 that had registered 400 and more employees in that same year, with an assumption of their growth by 2018 in terms of the number of their employees. This research was focused on the structure of the indicators identified in non-financial reports, viewed as content-oriented and entry-oriented measures (attributes). The indicators analyzed were extracted from the original research done on the quality of non-financial reports of the companies in Croatia registering 400 and more employees. The method employed was a conMilena Peršić, Lahorka Halmi 182 tent analysis. The results show that many of the disclosed sustainability indicators are "story-tellers", meaning that they are past-oriented and qualitatively stated, suggesting that activities concerning sustainability in company are present, but no cause-effect relationships are presented therein. The results point to a need for significant improvements in defining a minimum of requirements for the indicators disclosed in non-financial reports. Since very few indicators reflect all of the attributes assessed in this research, there is a need for finding ways to capture relevant data in accounting of enterprises, so as to establish a requirement for comparability of non-financial information disclosed in sustainability reports and thus bring about the requirements of the Directive 2014/95/EU.
Keywords:Directive 2014/95/EU, non-financial information, sustainability, integrated reporting, hospitality industry, Croatia. J E L Classification: M41, M48, Q56, D81.Abstract: Subsequent to the Directive 2014/95/EU (EUDNFI) and Croatian Accounting Act (CAA), available non-financial information disclosed by Croatian hospitality companies in non-financial (sustainability) reports were analysed for their breadth and quality using the content analysis method The results of preliminary research of hospitality industry were used in order to explore the specifics of non-financial reporting in the hospitality industry, using case study method. Results reveal the highest scores among the quality principles is timeliness, among areas are environment, labour practice, and community/society, and an overall score to be 7.67 (out of 30). The lowest scores of quality principles were reliability and comparability, whereas areas were product Milena Peršić, Lahorka Halmi 96 and human rights. The results point to a need for establishing a framework for disclosing non-financial information in reports to make them useful to internal and external users. Therefore, relevant opinions of experts, bodies and associations, such as CSR Europe, International Integrated Reporting Council, GRI's Corporate Leadership Group, will be considered in creating a model, with a particular emphasis on the globally accepted sustainability accounting standards.
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