Users’ Information Requirements and Narrative Reporting: The Case of Iranian Companies

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the narrative section of Iranian companies’ annual reports satisfies theinformation requirements of financial analysts employed by institutional investors. Taking a group ofstakeholders (i.e. financial analysts) as the sample, a questionnaire survey was conducted to identify their topthree information needs from the narrative sections of company annual reports in each of three informationcategories: Present, Analytical and Prospective. Following this survey, a checklist was prepared to analysewhether Iranian companies are disclosing this information required by financial analysts. Overall, the resultspartially support stakeholder theory as there is a general lack of information flow on the part of Iranian listedcompanies in meeting their stakeholders’ information needs.

Keywords

• Annual Reports
• Narrative sections
• Users’ information needs
• Iranian companies