Understanding the latest research findings and evidence on corporate reporting: literature review

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) wishes to commission a literature review to support a major project on the Future of Corporate Reporting (for further details visit the FRC website and see the attached PDF). The literature review is expected to take place over a period of months, starting as soon as possible.

The customer for the work is the FRC.

The literature review will explore articles and research papers to determine the extent to which analyses have been undertaken which support the objectives of the Future of Corporate Reporting project.

The following questions should be treated as a guide only and tender bids should suggest others where they are considered relevant to the Future of Corporate Reporting project: (For the full list of questions, please see the attached PDF)

Purpose

1. What is the purpose of corporate reporting?

2. What is the purpose of the annual report?

3. What is non-financial/ ESG/ sustainability reporting and how is this information used?

4. How does the annual report fit into the wider corporate reporting framework?

Content

5. What are the information needs of investors and how is this information used?

6. What are the information needs of users that are not capital providers and how is this information used?

Delivery

7. What are the characteristics of good corporate reporting?

We propose that the research will cover:

• A scoping survey of all the topics covered in the available literature on corporate reporting (not necessarily limited to the questions addressed by the Future of Corporate reporting project), an indication of the quality and quantity of reputable research findings and the extent to which they address, or not, the questions for the Future of Corporate Reporting Project to enable refinement of the research areas which will yield the most recent, relevant and credible findings. Agree keywords, if appropriate.

• A detailed review of some agreed areas, a summary of the main findings, their soundness in terms of methodology and data used, and any limitations of the research, for example, where the size of some study samples is not big enough to draw reasonable conclusions. This latter element would also assess any areas where there is insufficient information or gaps in the current literature against the questions addressed by the Future of Corporate Reporting project.

We will also consider joint bids reflecting different specialisms; please indicate which organisations or personnel would anticipate covering particular themes (and the cost split of doing so in the context of the project budget).

The budget for this project is £35,000 excluding VAT.

The project proposal will be evaluated against the following criteria:

1. Evidence of understanding the brief

2. Suitability of proposed methodology

3. Experience undertaking similar projects and academic standing

4. Cost

Closing date for tenders: 5pm, Friday 22 February 2019.

Please submit to h.grimshaw@frc.org.uk