School of Business

Internet financial reporting is now widespread with most medium and large companies in the developed world providing a wide variety of financial data online. However, much of this information mirrors the paper versions of financial reports, often with little attempt to enhance the decision usability of the data, providing a so called 'first generation' of online reporting . eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) has been designed to provide a 'second generation' of online reporting, specifically to enhance the usability of the data. Documents rendered in XBRL are digitally-enabled so that it is easier for stakeholders to extract information directly into spreadsheets, or any other XBRLenabled analysis software, without the need to re-key data thus providing significant improvements in information flows and enhancing inter-company comparability. XBRL consortia have spent more than 15 years promulgating the use of this technology within the business and government communities. However, despite their efforts XBRL has not become widely diffused, there is little stakeholder engagement and very few organisations have voluntarily adopted XBRL in practice. The results of a questionnaire survey in the UK indicate that awareness of XBRL, and second generation reporting more generally, resides in key champions but there is little diffusion outside this narrow set of stakeholders. Regulatory engagement seems to be the only impetus for diffusion and better channels of communication within stakeholder networks, such as between regulators, preparers, users and the XBRL community are needed. This paper suggests that currently the supply-push for XBRL is failing to produce effective use of this technology in the UK. Greater regulatory commitment is now needed to create an impetus for XBRL such as creating tools and making publicly available, accessible, repositories of XBRL data. Unless this happens, diffusion will not occur, and the demand-pull which is now needed will vanish and XBRL will fade and die. The British Accounting Review 45 (2013) 167-182 1 See http://www.xbrl.org/uk for further details on the UK based organisation including details of membership. For more details on XII see http://www. xbrl.org. 2 'Interactive data' is the term used by the SEC for its XBRL filings project to require all US listed companies to file quarterly and annual returns with it in XBRL format (http://xbrl.sec.gov). It uses this term to underline the nature of the difference in data use that its new requirements will produce rather than focussing on the technology (XBRL) that enables this. 3 The principles of stakeholder engagement are long established in the IT literature where the notion of participatory design with imagined and surrogate users involved in the design process, is common (Mumford, 2003). T. Dunne et al. / The British Accounting Review 45 (2013) 167-182 168