A Text-Mining Analysis on the Review of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive. Bringing Value Creation for Stakeholders into Accounting

• Main Authors: Simona Fiandrino, Alberto Tonelli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: Non-Financial Reporting Directive; NFRD; non-financial information disclosure; text-mining analysis; stakeholder accounting; sustainable development
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/763

The recent Review of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) aims to enhance adequate non-financial information (NFI) disclosure and improve accountability for stakeholders. This study focuses on this regulatory intervention and has a twofold objective: First, it aims to understand the main underlying issues at stake; second, it suggests areas of possible amendment considering the current debates on sustainability accounting and accounting for stakeholders. In keeping with these aims, the research analyzes the documents annexed to the contribution on the Review of the NFRD by conducting a text-mining analysis with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) probabilistic topic model (PTM). Our findings highlight four main topics at the core of the current debate: quality of NFI, standardization, materiality, and assurance. The research suggests ways of improving managerial policies to achieve more comparable, relevant, and reliable information by bringing value creation for stakeholders into accounting. It further addresses an integrated logic of accounting for stakeholders that contributes to sustainable development.