Sustainability and Intellectual Capital Performance: is there a Relationship? Evidence from the European Oil and Gas Industry

Involvement in CSR activities has proven to have certain advantages for companies, including better financial performance and shareholder wealth maximisation. Firm’s value creation process has been strongly influenced by companies’ intangible assets and concurrently by the concept of Intellectual Capital. The purpose of this study is to provide evidence from an environmental sensitive industry about the interaction between sustainability and Intellectual Capital, and additionally contribute to the understanding and awareness of an innovative model of corporate reporting, i.e. Integrated Reporting (<IR>). Building on these reflections, this empirical study in particular aims at investigating the potential influence on Intellectual Capital performance of firm approach about the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting and the adoption of Integrated Reporting. In this regard, we posited five research hypotheses on the assumption of a positive association between Environmental, Social and Governance performance, Integrated Reporting and Intellectual Capital performance. From a methodological standpoint, a longitudinal analysis, is carried out on a sample of 42 European listed large-sized companies. Our findings reveal a crucial role exerted by the adoption of Integrated Reporting on Intellectual Capital performance highlighting consequently the need of further examining in depth the innovative multiple capitals disclosure and the integrated thinking process.