Corporate governance mechanisms and disclosure quality: Evidence from UK top 100 public companies

Abstract

This research is aimed to explore the determinants of corporate governance disclosures with emphasis on board structure and external audit. Theoretical and empirical literature shows conflicting evidence on how aspects of corporate governance are related to disclosures. This study carried out an extensive synthesis of the existing literature, taking into account the aims of analysis and the underlying situation of past studies, to come up with tentative answers to the research questions before the analysis. The paper adopts a balanced analysis in which disclosures are assumed to be as a result of both board and non-board factors but still within the corporate governance realm. In order to achieve the overall aim, the study sample was drawn from the existing list of UK’s Top 100 FTSE non-regulated firms. A combination of quantitative statistical and business analytics methods was used to carry out the analysis. Using the Corporate Governance Disclosure Quality (CGDQ) index as the dependent variable and selected board and non-board factors as independent variables, pooled OLS regressions were run. The diagnostic tests were carried out to establish the relative contribution of each independent variable to the model. It was established that the age of board members, the proportion of female directors, the frequency of audit committee meetings, external audit expense, firm growth opportunities, and firm size were important determinants of CGDQ. It was suggested that future studies should investigate whether board structure is still an important determinant of corporate disclosures in the age of advanced information technology.