Searching for regulation in corporate narrative reporting for charitable organisations in the past: an historical exploration in Italy and the UK

Since the last decades of the 20th century, there has been progressive, international adoption and harmonisation of narrative/non-financial information in corporate reporting. While the growing interest of regulators, practitioners and researchers towards corporate narratives increasingly underlines the relevance for the adoption of Corporate Narrative Reporting (CNR), it may be asked if, and how, governments have focused attention towards this form of external communication. By adopting an historical approach and methodology, this chapter provides a retrospective, comparative study between Italy and the United Kingdom (UK, exploring the reporting of charitable hospitals at the end of the 19th century, and (CNR, the non-financial/narrative information disclosed. Although the end of the 19th century represents a fervent period of reforms and scientific discoveries in Europe, this period also provides the opportunity to observe the approach towards CNR, during a period when country-differences were much stronger than exist currently.