الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Disclosure is identified as one of the challenges facing the implementation of corporate governance especially in developing countries. The current study aims to contribute to corporate governance and disclosure literature by providing empirical evidence of the relationship between corporate governance, ownership structure and the voluntary disclosure in an emerging capital market, namely Egypt. The study assesses the extent of total voluntary disclosure and its categories in the annual reports of the most active non financial companies in the Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange over four years that witnessed remarkable initiatives to enhance transparency and corporate governance. It employs a wider theoretical framework based mainly on the political economic approach and benefits from institutional theory. The findings indicate that while the extent of voluntary disclosure is low, there was a gradual increase in the extent of total voluntary disclosure and its categories over the examined period. However, there is no significant difference between the voluntary disclosures over the four years. This suggests that companies manage their voluntary disclosure policy which is not a random practice but subject to certain influences. The results indicate that board characteristics; board size and board composition; do affect the extent of voluntary disclosure. Interestingly, the existence of family members on the board has a positive association with voluntary disclosure. This suggests that family led companies may have litigation and reputation cost concern. While the presence of foreign members and board size were found to affect voluntary disclosure positively, the percentage of nonexecutive directors has a negative effect. Furthermore, the study provides evidence that the determinants of voluntary disclosure vary among the different categories. There was no single variable can explain the total voluntary disclosure and its categories. This highlights the need to analyze the different categories of voluntary disclosure |