Analysis of Nonfinancial Reporting and Integrated Reporting Application: The Case of State-Owned Companies in Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia—Some Initial Evidence

Integrated reporting and nonfinancial reporting are becoming prominent matters in financial reporting in the last two decades. Practical implications in this field are conceptualized in the IR Framework and other nonfinancial reporting standards. However, the application of the standards varies in different jurisdictions and in different sectors. Some public sector reporting entities have embraced more recently the integrated reporting as an alternative to traditional public sector reporting. The objective of this chapter is to examine application of nonfinancial reporting by the state-owned companies in southeast Europe, specifically Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia. Data is collected on large state-owned companies from the region. The data is collected from publicly available financial reports. The information collected is evaluated for the disclosure quality against the IR Framework Content Elements. This chapter shows that Serbian state-owned companies generally do not have at all any nonfinancial reporting in their reports. The best application of nonfinancial reporting is in Slovenia, while in Croatia analyzed companies nonfinancial reporting exists, however, often such reporting is not in the form of the IR Framework. There is a correlation between each country’s EU membership and related EU directives on the public sector reporting and the quality of nonfinancial reporting by researched state-owned companies. This chapter provides informative comparison and insights into the emerging nonfinancial reporting practice in public sector and provides support for regulation to encourage and improve such reporting in public sector.