Leveraging Global Intellectual Capital Through Sustainability Reporting: The Role of Non-Financial Factors and the Accounting Profession

Companies are increasingly valued according to sustainability criteria, so governance policies represent a credible source of information on the entity’s ability to create value for employees and the community. Intellectual capital becomes a valuable source of innovation, using non-financial factors as essential tools in sustainability reporting. The accounting professional is an important balancing point, supporting the processing and validation of non-financial information in digital reporting contexts. Numerous studies address these concepts separately without highlighting causal links between non-financial factors, professional accountants and sustainability reporting. This paper explores intellectual capital valorization through integrative perspectives in the context of sustainable performance, based on documentary synthesis and content analysis of non-financial information from 30 Romanian companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The paper clarifies the contribution of extra-financial factors in measuring intellectual capital and the role of professional accountants in developing valid and compliant reports through intelligent information systems. Results indicate that non-financial indicators play an integrative role in developing global intellectual capital, while human expert reasoning maintains its primary role in interpreting and validating information. The proposed conceptual model highlights links between the main concepts, serving as a starting point for future quantitative studies.