Are narratives in the corporate annual report influenced by firm attributes?

The yearly corporate report of a narrative disclosure probably helps the users who lack the resources, expertise and tools required in interpreting and garnering the corporate information. In corporate reporting, it is no longer adequate to only include the income statement and balance sheet; thereby exists the extensive number of narrative disclosures catering the various stakeholders. However, in recent times there is a mark of growth in the size of corporate reports. They are becoming richer and longer in content. Making the corporate reports incomparable for the general users and becomes very difficult to handle even for the technical specialists. In light of this, the present study investigated the power of fixed attributes on the level of corporate narrative disclosures, if any, through multiple regression analysis and found that size, level of foreign shareholding, and revenue from abroad are major attributes having an important influence on the divergence in the disclosure of narratives in corporate annual report. The study may be helpful to corporate managers, regulators and accounting standard-setters for the improvement of narrative disclosure practice in corporate annual reports.