An Empirical Investigation of Disclosure, Usage and Usefulness of Corporate Accounting Information

This paper reports the findings of an empirical investigation into the disclosure of corporate accounting information to trade union decision makers. These findings are evaluated against earlier normative and descriptive literature on corporate disclosure to trade unions and an attempt is made to derive some implications for the design of accounting reports for use in the context of collective bargaining. The research methodology used was a case study of decision making in one trade union, the Amalgamated Textile Workers' Union (ATWU) which represents most of the manual workers in the Lancashire cotton industry.