Post WWII Employee Annual Reports

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Abstract

The content of traditional annual reports for publicly-owned corporations is undergoing significant change. Whether in the traditional printed form, or increasingly, via web-based formats, annual reports are moving beyond the mere reporting of the fiscal year’s financial results. Corporate annual reports are beginning to include supplemental disclosures on the corporation’s labor, supplier and environmental activities, governance, social responsibility and, most recently, sustainability. This trend has been observed more frequently for corporations based outside of the United States, though a small number of U.S. corporations have embraced these concepts as well. Such supplemental disclosures are made not only to its shareholders, but also increasingly to individuals, groups and other entities that have a direct stake (i.e. stakeholders) in the corporation’s activities, successes and/or other matters at hand.
This paper looks at the development of the stakeholder model and some of groups behind the recent expansion of annual reports to include their concerns. Looking back historically, the paper then reviews certain early examples of stakeholder reporting in the automobile and railroad industries. Next, the paper analyzes a number of specialized annual reports issued major U.S. publicly-owned corporations to their employees, beginning just before World War II and generally continuing into the 1970s. Such employee annual report reports were issued voluntarily and represent an early example of stakeholder reporting.
Key words: annual reports, employee annual reports, accounting history, voluntary reporting, stakeholders, supplemental reporting, railroads

Author

• Kevin Feeney, SCSU