Title: The Influencing Factor of Voluntary Disclosure: Based on Perspective of the Board Governance
Abstract: Compelled information disclosure and voluntary information disclosure are part of information disclosure of listed companies. The former refers to the information explicitly stipulated by laws and regulations that must be disclosed while the latter refers to the information disclosure except the compelled information disclosure,the information that listed companies volunteer to disclose out of corporation image,investor relations,avoidance of litigation risk and other motives. Not all information excluding the information that is compelled to be disclosed belongs to voluntary disclosure. The information of voluntary disclosure should be of value relevance and be able to help the investors and obliges learn the strategies of the company,key factors of management,environment of competition,decision-making frame and the measures taken by the company in order to ensure the sustainable management.The board of directors is the core of corporate governance,plays a key role in overseeing the generation and final disclosure of the managers' regular report,and board characteristics affect the level of voluntary information disclosure. In China,only a few papers testing board characteristics influence on voluntary information disclosure are in the way of empirical methods,and the research on the number of characteristic variables,such as board meeting and board of director's shareholding proportion,on voluntary disclosure is involved less.Through the study of information technology industry listed Corporation in 2005 and 2006,the study shows that: the proportion of independent directors,shareholding proportion in board of directors and the level of voluntary information disclosure are in significantly positive correlation; Chair-CEO duality and the level of voluntary information disclosure is negatively correlated; the size of the board of directors as well as the number of the meeting of the board of directors and the level of voluntary information disclosure is not significantly correlated. The paper,by studying relationships among Board features and voluntary disclosure,tries to find out the defect on the system,so as to have great realistic significance on the construction of board system. Specifically,we summarize the conclusions in the following. Firstly,although the listed companies release information to some extent according to some situations in China's information technology industry,yet we find that they are not willing to disclose information and but hope to reduce the disclosure of corporation information and that there are tremendous difference in disclosure degree of all companies through the research. Secondly,there is no significant correlation between the scale of the board of directors and the voluntary information disclosure of listed companies in China's information technology industry probably because different scales of the board of directors have the influence mechanism of voluntary information disclosure of listed companies,which needs further exploration. Besides,there is no significant correlation between the frequency of the meeting of the board of directors and the voluntary information disclosure of listed companies in China's information technology industry. Thirdly,the higher the rate of directors of shareholding,the better the situation of voluntary information disclosure is,which shows that if directors hold shares of the company,their motivation of supervision of the management will become stronger and they will ask the company to release more information. Fourthly,there is significant positive correlation between the rate of independent directors and the voluntary information disclosure of listed companies in China's information technology industry. That is to say,the bigger the rate of independent directors is,the stronger will to disclosure relevant information they will have,which shows that China's independent director system have displayed effectiveness and that raising the rate of independent directors is helpful for monitoring the executive directors better. Besides,there is significant negative correlation between the position duality and the voluntary information disclosure.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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