Disclosure of Human Capital Practices: The Case of the GCC Banking Sector

Abstract

The objective is to assess the disclosure practices of human capital in the banking sector of the Gulf Council Countries. This study aims to assess the level and quality of human capital disclosure and to investigate the consistency among countries. The study investigates the human disclosure practice of eight banks from each the six gulf countries with a total of 48 banks out of the 56 national banks over five years. The paper develops the variables of the disclosure index based on long discussion with professional and researchers. The disclosure index is computed for each variable for all banks under the sample. Compensation comes as the most disclosed variable with an average score of 2.87 Whereas knowledge is the least disclosed variable with an average score of 0.75. The Bahrain banks score the first level of disclosure with a disclosure score of 391, followed by UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait.