Contextual research of strategic theories for non-financial reporting : a system-structural approach to formulating reporting principles

The principles of non-financial reporting are a prerequisite for the harmonization of reporting standards and a guarantee of comparability of reporting indicators. A lack of a long-term and established practice in preparing non-financial reporting does not allow forming its principles as generally accepted rules for the preparation of reporting data. Therefore, the system of principles of non-financial reporting should be based on the results of scientific research on the theories of disclosure of non-financial information, including publications indexed in the SCOPUS. Based on the results of the bibliometric and linguistic analysis of the selected scientific publications, the correspondence was established between the content substance of the postulates of the most popular motivational theories of non-financial reporting (agency theory, institutional theory, legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory) and individual components of the mechanism of disclosure of non-financial information. The identified causal relationships allowed formalizing the principles of preparing non-financial statements and combining them into a coherent system that covers informational, legal, organizational and communicative aspects of the reporting mechanism and consists of such principles as: application of differentiated metrics; the predominance of substance over form; business accountability; access to information of public interest; reporting coherence; reporting preparation periodicity; full coverage; consistent and continuous disclosure. The formed system of principles of non-financial reporting comprehensively takes into account the peculiarities of the process of preparation of reporting data which mainly contains non-financial information. Therefore, its use as a basis for non-financial reporting standards will contribute to their harmonization and increase the comparability of reporting data.