Title: Voluntary corporate governance disclosures in the annual reports: an empirical study

Authors: Madan Lal Bhasin; Junaid M. Shaikh

Addresses: Department of Accounting and Finance, Bang College of Business, KIMEP University, Dostyk Building, Abai Avenue 2, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan ' Department of Accounting, School of Business, Curtin University, Sarawak Campus (Off Shore Campus), CDT 250, 98009, Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia

Abstract: Corporate governance (CG) disclosure is a fundamental theme of the 'modern' corporate-regulatory system, which encompasses providing 'governance' information to the public in a variety of ways. This study explores the voluntary CG practices of 50 corporations, over and above the mandatory requirements of clause 49 of the listing agreement. In order to study the voluntary CG disclosure practices, a 'content analysis' was done, and finally, a 'CG disclosure' index was prepared. We have primarily used 'secondary' sources of information, both from the 'report on CG' and the 'annual reports' for the financial year 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. As a part of voluntary CG disclosure, a total of 40 items have been selected from the CG section of the annual reports and proxy forms. In order to provide a comparison 'across' industries, corporations have been selected from four industries, viz., software, textiles, sugar and paper. Appropriate statistical tools and techniques have been applied for the analysis. It has been observed that "corporations are following less than 50 percent of the items of CG disclosure index. Moreover, there is no significant difference among the disclosure scores across the four industries".

Keywords: voluntary disclosure; corporate governance; annual reports; VCGD; empirical study; clause 49; listing agreement; disclosure index; software industry; textile industry; sugar industry; paper industry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMFA.2013.052432

International Journal of Managerial and Financial Accounting, 2013 Vol.5 No.1, pp.79 - 105

Published online: 11 Oct 2014 *

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