Reporting on COVID-19 – or not? Annual report disclosure of the pandemic as a subsequent event

• Purpose – This paper focuses on the extent to which Swedish municipalities identified and communicatedrisks due to the COVID-19 outbreak early on. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent thesituational factors of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the likelihood of municipalities disclosing COVID-19information as a subsequent event in the annual reports of 2019.Design/methodology/approach – Logistic regression models were used to estimate COVID-19 disclosure asa subsequent event. Data were handpicked from annual reports, audit reports and meeting minutes, or wereretrieved from publicly available sources.Findings – Regression results indicate that municipalities issuing their annual report in a later stage of thepandemic, in regions with a higher number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, were more likely to discloseCOVID-19 information as a subsequent event. However, the municipal factors used to capture the risk of asevere impact of the COVID-19 outbreak were not of major importance. In line with previous research, thisstudy shows that political and institutional factors have explanatory power in predicting and explainingaccounting disclosure choices.Originality/value – This paper contributes to research on accounting disclosures in urgent crises and on thespecific topic of subsequent events in the public sector. Few studies address subsequent events in a corporatesetting and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, none do so in the context of the public sector. This paper alsooffers insight into how explanatory factors, previously tested under normal conditions and circumstances,influence disclosure choices in an early stage of a health crisis characterized by uncertainty regarding bothoccurrence and consequences.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Studier av offentlig förvaltning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Public Administration Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Annual report

Crisis

Covid-19

Disclosure

Public Sector Accounting

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)