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This paper explores the social and political potential of accounting scholarship, presenting and discussing an intellectual intervention challenging a legislative reform that significantly affected Spanish industrial relations. In this reform, an accounting artifact (forecasted losses) played an unexpected role and was misrepresented, prompting a sizeable number of scholars to sign two manifestos in 2010 and 2012 against the use of forecasted losses made by the new legislation. As promoters of this manifesto, we perform in this paper a collaborative autoethnography to reflect on the context, events, reactions, and significance of this intervention for both the academic and the industrial relations fields. We mobilize Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on the public intellectual to think more generally about academic engagements in the interplay between accounting, policymaking, and social issues. This intervention illustrates the different manners in which administrative and economic powers interfered in the Spanish accounting academic field, limiting the disposition of Spanish scholars to engage in public debates. We also interpret our engagement as mobilizing intellectual capital to expose how the notion of forecasted losses was used to produce a form of symbolic violence and how this capital is more effective as it produces messages addressed to the producers, i.e., policymakers and the judicature in this specific case.

[ES] La Directiva 2014/95/UE impone nuevos requisitos en cuanto a la divulgación de información no financiera (IFN). El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la IFN divulgada por las empresas cotizadas españolas. Se trata de un estudio pionero en España, ya que se realizó durante el primer año en el que la divulgación de IFN era obligatoria, según los requisitos de la adaptación española a la mencionada Directiva. Determinamos si las decisiones sobre la presentación de la información no financiera adoptadas al respecto (es decir, hacerlo dentro del informe de gestión o como un informe de sostenibilidad independiente) dependen de las características de la empresa. Además, estudiamos si el contenido de dichos informes difiere significativamente. Los resultados muestran que algunas empresas españolas no divulgan la información no financiera obligatoria. Las empresas más grandes y rentables, que pertenecen a sectores específicos y que tienen un comité de sostenibilidad, son más propensas a divulgar esta información en un informe de sostenibilidad. Los contenidos de las memorias de gestión y de sostenibilidad presentan diferencias significativas., [EN] The Directive 2014/95/EU imposes new requirements regarding the disclosure of non-financial information (NFI). The aim of this paper is to analyse the NFI disclosed by Spanish listed companies. This is a pioneering study in Spain, since it was conducted during the first year in which NFI disclosure was mandatory, according to the requirements of the Spanish adaptation of Directive. We determine whether decisions on NFI reporting adopted in this respect (i.e. to do so within the management report or as a separate sustainability report) depend on the company¿s characteristics. In addition, we consider whether the content of such reports differs significantly. Findings show that some Spanish companies do not disclose mandatory NFI. Larger and more profitable companies, which belong to specific sectors and have a sustainability committee, are more likely to disclose this information in a sustainability report. The contents of management and sustainability reports present significant differences.

La modificación del contenido del informe de auditoria responde a la aplicación de la exigencia impuesta por el art. 5 de la Ley de Auditoria y concretada por la NIA-ES 701 “Cuestiones clave de auditoria” (CCA) (ICAC,2016). Como novedad se exige al auditor que, atendiendo a su juicio profesional, muestre en el informe los riesgos más significativos de la auditoría de la empresa y las respuestas a esos riesgos. Debido a que dentro del entorno europeo, el Reino Unido ya viene informando de dichos riesgos desde 2013 y que en España todavía no disponemos de los mismos, hemos planteado esta investigación. El objetivo es pronosticar el nivel de CCA que previsiblemente nos encontraremos en España y además, distinguiendo si dichas CCA se deben a riesgos de la entidad o a riesgos contables. Para alcanzarlo hemos utilizado como muestra de análisis 144 observaciones de empresas no financieras y cotizadas en el FTSE100 para los años 2013 y 2016. Nuestros resultados muestran que, puesto que la estructura del mercado de auditoría es bastante similar en España yen el Reino Unido, las diferencias en el número de CCA serán muy poco relevantes. Este trabajo contribuye a profundizar el entendimiento de los nuevos informes de auditoría lo cual será útil por contribuir, por un lado, a académicos en el desarrollo de una línea de investigación emergente y, por otro, a profesionales que se enfrentarán en breve con la difícil tesitura de emitir los primeros informes de acuerdo a la nueva normativa., The modification of the content of the audit report responds to the application of the requirement imposed by the NIA-ES 701 “Key Audit Matters” (KAM) (ICAC, 2016). The new standard requires the auditor to disclose in the audit report, based on the professional judgment, the most significant risks of the company identified during the audit and how they addressed those risks. Within the European environment, theUnited Kingdom has been including such risks in the audit reports since 2013. As in Spain the effects ofthe new audit standard are not evident yet, we propose this research with the objective of forecastingthe level of KAMs to be seen in the audit reports in Spain, distinguishing if these KAMs are entity-levelor account-level risks. In order to achieve this, the sample includes 144 observations of non - financialcompanies listed in the FTSE100 for the years 2013 and 2016. The results show that since the structure ofthe audit market is quite similar in Spain and in the United Kingdom, the differences in the number of KAMwill not be relevant. This paper is timely to contribute, on the one hand, to academics in the developmentof an emerging research area and, on the other hand, to professionals who will face soon the difficult taskof issuing audit reports in accordance with the new European regulation.

The modification of the content of the audit report responds to the application of the requirement imposed by the NIA-ES 701 "Key Audit Matter" (KAM) (ICAC, 2016). The new standard requires the auditor to disclose in the audit report, based on the professional judgment, the most significant risks of the company identified during the audit and how they addressed those risks. Within the European environment, the United Kingdom has been including such risks in the audit reports since 2013. As in Spain the effects of the new audit standard are not evident yet, we propose this research with the objective of forecasting the level of KAMs to be seen in the audit reports in Spain, distinguishing if these KAMs are entity-level or account-level risks. In order to achieve this, the sample includes 144 observations of non - financial companies listed in the FTSE100 for the years 2013 and 2016). The results show that since the structure of the audit market is quite similar in Spain and in the United Kingdom, the differences in the number of KAM will not be relevant. This paper is timely to contribute, on the one hand, to academics in the development of an emerging research area and, on the other hand, to professionals who will face soon the difficult task of issuing audit reports in accordance with the new European regulation., La modificación del contenido del informe de auditoria responde a la aplicación de la exigencia impuesta por el art. 5 de la Ley de Auditoria y concretada por la NIA-ES 701 “Cuestiones clave de auditoria” (CCA) (ICAC, 2016). Como novedad se exige al auditor que, atendiendo a su juicio profesional, muestre en el informe los riesgos más significativos de la auditoría de la empresa y las respuestas a esos riesgos. Debido a que dentro del entorno europeo, el Reino Unido ya viene informando de dichos riesgos desde 2013 y que en España todavía no disponemos de los mismos, hemos planteado esta investigación. El objetivo es pronosticar el nivel de CCA que previsiblemente nos encontraremos en España y además, distinguiendo entre si dichas CCA se deben a riesgos de la entidad o a riesgos contables. Para alcanzarlo hemos utilizado como muestra de análisis (144 observaciones de empresas no financieras y cotizadas en el FTSE100) para los años 2013 y 2016. Nuestros resultados muestran que, puesto que la estructura del mercado de auditoría es bastante similar en España y en el Reino Unido, las diferencias en el número de CCA serán muy poco relevantes. Este trabajo contribuye a profundizar el entendimiento de los nuevos informes de auditoría lo cual será útil por contribuir, por un lado, a académicos en el desarrollo de una línea de investigación emergente y, por otro, a profesionales que se encentrarán en breve con la difícil tesitura de emitir los primeros informes de acuerdo a la nueva normativa.

[EN] Spain is one of the European countries that is the most strongly committed to the presentation of non-financial information. In 2017, Spain adapted its legislation to Directive 2014/95/EU through Royal Decree-Law 18/2017, which required Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to provide information in accordance with the requirements of the European Union (EU) Directive, with respect to financial years from 1 January 2017. Our research is focused on Spanish IBEX-351 listed companies and seeks to identify current trends in non-financial reporting. To our knowledge, the present paper is the first study to examine the impact made in Spain by the legislative changes. Our aim is to analyse the publication of non-financial information by Spanish listed companies whose first reports in this regard were made from early 2018. Specifically, we consider the impact of this information disclosure, determining whether the companies in question restrict themselves to meeting regulatory requirements or whether they go further and voluntarily supply additional information. Our findings show that the level of regulatory compliance produced is associated with the business sector in which the company operates. We also show that the highest rates of disclosure of non-financial information correspond to companies that provide this information in the sustainability report.

In accordance with the Kyoto Protocol, Spain has created a National Carbon Footprint Registry by Royal Decree 163/2014. This constitutes a pioneering initiative to help Spanish companies give visibility to their efforts in reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Hence, this paper explores the motivation of Spanish companies to register their carbon footprints with a higher degree of scope. We identify the characteristics of the first Spanish companies that registered their carbon footprint through a logistic regression model (logit). The study concludes that organizations are more likely to register a higher scope if they do not belong to the manufacturing sector, if they are relatively new, and have a culture of environmental transparency., Em concordância com o Protocolo de Quioto, Espanha cria o “Registro Nacional de Pegada de Carbono, Remuneração e Projetos de Absorção” por meio do Decreto Real 163/2014. Esta é uma iniciativa pioneira para incentivar as empresas espanholas a dar visibilidade ao seu compromisso de reduzir suas emissões de gases de efeito estufa (GEE). Neste contexto, a pesquisa atual explora os determinantes da adesão ao registro nacional espanhol de pegada de carbono. Um estudo exploratório das características das primeiras empresas espanholas que decidiram inscrever sua pegada de carbono foi realizado, através de um modelo de regressão logística (logit). O estudo conclui que as organizações que são mais propensas a registrar um maior alcance de sua pegada de carbono, caracterizam-se por fazer parte de um setor diferente da indústria de transformação, recém-criado e ter uma cultura ambiental transparente., A raíz del Protocolo de Kioto, España crea el Registro Nacional de Huella de Carbono, Compensación y Proyectos de Absorción de Dióxido de Carbono mediante el Real Decreto 163/2014. Ello se constituye en una iniciativa pionera para potenciar que las empresas españolas den visibilidad a su compromiso en la reducción de sus emisiones de Gases de Efecto Invernadero (GEI). Bajo este contexto, la presente inves­tigación explora los determinantes de la adhesión al Registro Nacional de Huella de Carbono español. Se realiza un estudio exploratorio de las características de las primeras empresas españolas que deci­dieron inscribir su huella de carbono, a través de un modelo de regresión logística (logit). El estudio concluye que las organizaciones que tienen mayor probabilidad de registrar un mayor alcance de su huella de carbono se caracterizan por pertenecer a un sector no manufacturero, ser de reciente creación y poseer una cultura ambiental transparente.

This study looks into the effects of voluntary sustainability reporting in analysts’ earnings forecasts as a driver for sustainable development. The methodology used is based on a regression model to test whether the issuance of a CSR stand-alone report affects analysts’ forecast errors and forecast dispersion. Forecast error refers to the difference between the forecasted earnings per share (EPS) and the actual EPS. Dispersion refers to the standard deviation in EPS forecasts between analysts following the same firm. Our study in the Spanish context includes 527 observations from listed firms and covers the period 2005–2010. We provide evidence that there is a negative statistically significant association between the absolute forecast earnings error and the publication of a sustainability report. However, we find that the CSR reports have lost power in reducing the earnings forecast error if we compare analysts' activity before the financial crisis and during the crisis itself, so we open up a question for future research to check whether this is a consistent trend or whether in times of economic recovery this phenomenon regains power. The main conclusion of this paper points to the importance of sustainable development and stakeholder engagement through the issuance of CSR reports, which can help the smooth running of capital markets in a context of increasing sensitiveness to social responsible investment. Our study in this field is pioneering in the Spanish setting, which is especially interesting given the growing trend to publish CSR reports in this country.