Centre for Enhanced Corporate Reporting

Sponsors: Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants
and University of Alberta School of Business

Enhanced Corporate Reporting
in the Presence of Regulation

March 2006 Call for Research and Papers
for a Conference to be held in Spring 2007

Enhanced corporate reporting refers to the portion of corporate reporting that goes beyond the GAAP financial statements, reflecting both voluntary disclosure and regulation. This includes the MD&A, earnings announcements, material change reports, production reports and sustainability reports, as well as various statutory filings providing management and other corporate information. Enhanced corporate reporting may consist of meeting regulatory requirements for such items, or going beyond those requirements voluntarily to provide more complete or more strategically driven information. Any voluntary disclosure may reflect management's approach or strategy, perceived inadequacy of GAAP to describe the particular enterprise, stage of the enterprise's life cycle, important intangibles, human capital or environmental issues, or best practices in the industry or country.

Management may be assisted by regulations in choosing the content, form, frequency and medium of its enhanced reporting, but also may be limited by mandatory compliance with regulations. Similarly, users of the reports may benefit from regulations that provide a minimum level of reporting, but also may be hampered if reporting is bounded by regulations.

The Centre for Enhanced Corporate Reporting (CECR) is interested in identifying and catalyzing research on the interaction between regulation and information value to users and reporting enterprises. Example topics of interest to the Centre include:

1. Value to users, including institutional investors, and to reporting enterprises of the various types and content of enhanced corporate reporting.
2. Relationship between enhanced corporate reporting and GAAP financial reporting.
3. Optimal level of reporting/disclosure regulation for smoothly functioning capital markets.
4. Impact on users and enterprises if such regulation is less or more than optimal.
5. Relationship between mandatory and voluntary enhanced corporate reporting, including incentives and costs/benefits of regulatory compliance versus those to produce enhanced enterprise-specific information.
6. Effect of reporting/disclosure regulation on measures of information value such as reliability, relevance, timeliness, understandability, credibility, transparency and comparability.
7. Effect of civil and criminal liability regimes on voluntary disclosure or compliance.
8. Focus and evolution of regulators' scrutiny of enhanced corporate reporting.
9. Canadian issues regarding enhanced corporate reporting and related regulations, such as for small-capitalization public companies not much followed by analysts.
10. Any of the above issues related to particular industries, such as oil and gas or income trusts.

CECR seeks papers using any research method or approach for a conference that will bring together researchers, users, preparers/managers, regulators, auditors and others in the spring of 2007. The conference, "Enhanced Corporate Reporting in the Presence of Regulation," will examine the interaction between regulation and enhanced reporting value. Objective analysis rather than advocacy for or against regulation is sought. CECR will pay travel and local costs for one author of every accepted paper for both a summer/fall 2006 coordination consultation and the conference, and other financial assistance may be available to researchers.

A three-stage process is planned leading up to the conference:

• It is anticipated that the conference will include some research prompted by this call for papers, so researchers are encouraged to contact the Centre with proposals or expressions of interest, as well as with draft papers reporting research already underway. Draft papers, research proposals or other expressions of interest are sought by July 1, 2006, so that an initial selection of researchers may be made in summer 2006. Please contact Michael Gibbins, CECR Director, at michael.gibbins@ualberta.ca. (Information is also welcome about proposed or ongoing research on enhanced corporate disclosure that may not appear to fit the conference topic or cannot be submitted to the conference.)
  
  
• After summer 2006, an initial mini-conference or other consultation will be held to coordinate research topics and set the spring 2007 conference date. A final roster of researchers and topics should follow that consultation, but some may be added later if circumstances require.
  
  
• The conference date and location will be set according to an agenda to be worked out after the coordination consultation. Conference papers will be requested by early spring of 2007, and will be posted on CECR's website. (A conference abstract will be prepared, but no conference proceedings will be published.)