Voluntary Intellectual Capital Disclosure and Big Data. Empirical evidence from a sample of Knowledge-Intensive Italian Companies

The present research aims at analysing the level of IC disclosure provided by a sample of knowledge-intensive Italian companies through an innovative tool - the web - considered as the most used vehicle to collecting, managing, conveying and sharing BD to investors and other stakeholders. From a methodological point of view, the research adopts a manual content analysis conducted on the websites of a sample of listed Italian companies belonging to the ICT sector. Results show that Italian companies operating in the knowledge-intensive sectors are aware of the importance of providing information on IC to the audience of investors and stakeholders and are exploiting the potential and opportunities offered by the web 2.0 and BD partnership.