The role of CFO and controller in the non-financial information process: preliminary results from an exploratory study.

The recent European Directive 2014/95/EU, also called the non-financial reporting directive, defines the rules on disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by large companies. Considering that nowadays CFOs are increasingly pressured and involved in corporate reporting, this research aims at exploring the role of CFO within non-financial disclosure (NFD) by the means of three cases using pilot interviews. The broad research question addressed is “What is the role played by the CFO (or controller) in the non-financial information process?”. Our findings provide some preliminary evidence on the relationships between the internal and external perspective, i.e., management accounting and NFD, but further research is still needed in this sense. Overall our evidence highlight that NFD is part of an evolution process in which many factors intervene and determine its final success: from the skills of the CFO (or controller) to the characteristics of the sector, from the degree of involvement of the CEO to the pressure of external stakeholders, and from the presence of a pre-existing corporate culture to the organization itself.