Title: Research and development disclosure information on internet by multinational corporations

Authors: Boutheina Ben Ghnaya

Addresses: U.A. QU. AP. High Institute of Management Tunis, University of Tunisia, Tunisia

Abstract: This article focuses on R&D disclosure information on internet by multinational corporations. We tried to identify factors that influence the internet R&D disclosure of these corporations. An index of R&D disclosure is constructed based on analysis of the websites of 145 corporations from 20 countries, selected from the Fortune Global 500 list, at March 2009. Several hypotheses about associations between that index and 11 independent variables are tested. These independent variables comprise both company-specific (internal) factors and external factors related to the environmental context of the company. Our findings show that internationality degree, industry type, firm size and R&D intensity are the main factors that explain the differences in the extent of corporate R&D disclosure on the internet.

Keywords: internet; R&D disclosure; research and development; MNCs; multinational corporations; internationality degree; industry type; firm size; R&D intensity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2015.072080

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2015 Vol.14 No.4, pp.274 - 304

Accepted: 07 Nov 2014
Published online: 30 Sep 2015 *

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