Accounting recognition of information as an asset

Attempts to recognize ‘information’ as an asset have led to an increased awareness of why and how this invisible valuable resource does not appear in the financial statements. This paper aims to develop a model based on three-circled sets of criteria for the pre-measurement phase of an asset recognition process. This model should be applicable to all types of assets, but we mainly focus on information as an intangible-based asset. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews and a questionnaire survey were used to provide triangulating perspectives to follow the grounded theory approach and generate artefact-based asset recognition criteria. The generated theory is applied to information as a candidate asset to explain how this invisible resource can be recognized in financial statements.