User’s perception on corporate annual reports: evidence from Sri Lanka

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how the users of corporate annual reports in Sri Lanka perceive the usefulness and relative importance of Sri Lankan’s corporate annual report. A self-administrated questionnaire was distributed to individuals representing the seven groups identified. Descriptive methods, the Kruskal-Wallis (K-W) test, the MannWhiteny (M-W) test and One-way ANOVA test were used to achieve the objectives of this study. The results of the study reveal that most respondents strongly agree that annual reports published by the listed companies in Sri Lanka are considered as an important major source for their decision-making process; however, the timely release and availability of these annual reports to the public are becoming a great of concern. The study also reveals that the company information contained in the annual reports is not sufficient for the purposes for which it is used. Finally, these finding reveal that, compared to the developed economy, Sri Lankan users rely more on the information contained in the corporate annual reports than the other sources of information. Further, with developing economy in Sri Lanka and other developing countries, an annual report is likely to provide a more holistic view of a company's picture going further than what is statutorily required.