This paper attempts to extend the understanding of the interaction between firms and investors with respect to the role of intellectual capital disclosure. Due to the quickly intensifying interest of firms and policy-makers in intellectual capital disclosure (as regards, for example, intellectual capital statements, social responsibility reporting, and integrated reporting), there is an urgent need to study the role of intellectual capital disclosure in building and maintaining corporate reputation. Using two empirical investigations with a focus on human capital as core element of intellectual capital—a German experiment and a Swedish focus group study—as points of departure, this paper argues that there is a need for complementary investigations of contextual, social character, and other approaches in studies of the interface between accounting and finance. The paper begins with a very brief overview of prior research on human capital disclosure. Sections 2 and 3 discuss the German and Swedish studies, followed by an analysis in section 4, where the concept of ‘reputation’ is introduced. In the concluding section 5, suggestions for further exploration are made.