Costs and Advantages of Non-financial Reporting by European Listed Companies. An Overview of the Academic Debate

European listed companies are adopting non-financial reporting (NFR) documents both in response to legal requirements and voluntarily. On the one hand, these documents involve the suffering of costs for companies that adopt them, in response to coercive and mimetic isomorphism; on the other hand, companies receive some advantages from adoption of these reporting documents. This study aims to understand the costs and advantages that these companies suffer and receive from NFR adoption, following the issuance of Directive 2014/95/EU. By structured literature review, this study maps the academic debate on this topic and carries out an overview of main focuses addressed in previous studies. The results highlight that the academic debate pays close attention to financial issues with a specific focus on profitability and cost of debt. Other issues were identified, regarding corporate reputation and legitimacy. However, the findings reached by the sampled articles are opposite and conflicting, and the need for further empirical studies arise. This study has academic and managerial implications. Knowing how the literature has paid attention to specific points, it makes practitioners more sensitive to these issues and supports them in taking more effective corporate actions.