Ownership structure and voluntary disclosure in Malaysian listed firms

This study investigates the impact of ownership structure on the extent of voluntary disclosure by Malaysian listed firms over the volatile time period 1996 to 2006. During this period of time, the onset of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and global corporate scandals resulted in major institutional and environmental changes. The nature of these regulatory reforms clearly impacted on firm management's incentives to voluntarily disclose more information in annual reports.The results show that the average level of voluntary disclosure is generally low although there is an increase in the extent of voluntary disclosure exhibited by Malaysian firms over the eleven-year time period. Controlling for firm size, leverage and profitability, the empirical results show that ownership concentration is positively associated with voluntary disclosure. The positive association of high ownership concentration may reflect the firms' choice to disclose more information as a governance initiative to enhance transparency. Institutional and foreign ownership have motivation to disclose in excess of mandatory requirements. The findings imply that the presence of institutional and foreign investors in a firm pushes firms to voluntarily disclose more information in annual reports. Such enhanced disclosure practice should be encouraged in order to attract funds from such investors both locally and abroad

The impact of governance and ownership structure on disclosure patterns transcending major regulatory change in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent of voluntary disclosures between 2006 and 2009 that transcends major regulatory and governance changes in Malaysia and to assess the association between strength of corporate governance structure, and ownership structure on the extent of voluntary disclosures of Malaysian listed firms over that period. The average level of voluntary disclosure within the annual reports of sample firms increased over the two periods. Further, the extent of voluntary disclosure is significantly positively associated with strength of corporate governance structure in both 2006 and 2009. Firms with concentrated ownership structure are associated with more extensive voluntary disclosures. These findings highlight the importance of an effective governance regime and concentrated ownership structure in reducing information asymmetry and agency costs and thereby enhancing the level of voluntary disclosures. These findings also have practical implications for policy-makers, analysts, auditors and regulators in Malaysia as well as East Asian countries

Corporate governance and different types of voluntary disclosure

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate governance on voluntary disclosure of different types of information in annual reports of Malaysian listed firms. Design/methodology/approach – A linear regression model is used to test the association between the level of voluntary disclosure of five key information categories and corporate governance. The sample consists of 100 firms over three different socio-economic periods: 1996, 2001 and 2006. Findings – There are significant increases in all the key information categories with better communication most pronounced between 1996 and 2001, and a noticeably lower level of communication growth between 2001 and 2006. The strength of a firm’s corporate governance structure clearly influences the voluntary disclosure of information relating to corporate and strategic directions, directors and senior management, financial and capital markets, forward-looking projections and corporate social responsibility in 2001 and 2006. Research limitations/implications – The use of a governance index to arrive at an overall corporate governance score has the potential to mask major underlying relationships of individual governance attributes. The use of the self-constructed disclosure indices may also omit certain information items that are employed in other prior studies. Moreover, the different categories of disclosures are solely constructed on the information disclosed in the annual reports without considering the alternative avenues.Practical implications – The results will assist regulators and policy-makers to better understand the impact of corporate governance on the voluntary disclosure of different types of corporate information in Malaysia. Originality/value – This study generates evidence of the changing scene of management voluntary disclosure practices embedded in the corporate governance framework in a developing country with an emerging capital market

Integrative model of behavioural intention: the influence of environmental concern and condition factors on food waste separation.

This paper positions environmental concern as the antecedent of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. It also sets to expand the theory of planned behaviour by including two condition factors: favourable situation and facility availability on the intention to separate food waste at source. The study collects data by using self-administered questionnaires on 682 respondents in Malaysia. Structural equation modelling is employed to test the conceptual model and the proposed hypotheses. The results show that environmental concern positively influences attitude and subjective norms, which, in turn, influences food waste separation intention. Favourable situation and facility availability are found to influence the separation intention. This study is one of the earliest studies to investigate residents' intention to participate in food waste separation at a source that employs the expanded theory of planned behaviour with environmental concern and condition factors

Female directors on corporate boards: does female leadership drive corporate environmental transparency?

This paper examines the role of female directors on corporate boardroom on the extent of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) of 260 Malaysian listed companies in year 2013. Resource dependence theory is utilized as the theoretical framework to explain the role of female directors on corporate boards.Content analysis is employed to gauge the extent of CED based on a self-constructed index that is derived from Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and prior studies.Multiple regression is conducted and findings revealed that female directors’ presence and female holding multiple directorships to be significant predictors of extent of CED.The findings lend support to the resource dependence theory on the contribution of board gender diversity and are useful for both policy makers and regulators

The Masters' Control: How Ownership Structure Influences the Communication of Financial Ratios

This study analyses the effect of the attributes of ownership structure and corporate governance on financial ratios disclosure in Malaysian listed firms’ annual reports over two key periods, 2001 and 2006. Overall, the extent of financial ratios disclosure has significantly increased from 12.2 per cent to 15.0 per cent. The highest level of financial ratios disclosure is for the sub-categories of Profitability, Cash Flow and Share Market Measures, whereas there is less information reported for Capital Structure and Liquidity ratios. Further, the analysis shows that the institutional ownership negatively influences the financial ratios disclosure for 2001; and foreign ownership is positively associated with financial ratios disclosure in 2006. Interestingly, family ownership appears to have no significant influence on the disclosure in either period. Ownership concentration, on the other hand has a positive association with financial ratios disclosure in 2001; this is the opposite direction than hypothesised. In addition, the corporate governance attributes have also influenced the financial ratios disclosure in 2001. As for control variables, firm size and profitability are found to have a positive relationship with financial ratios disclosure for both years. These findings provide evidence that the attributes of ownership structure and the implementation of sound corporate governance reduce the information asymmetry between management and stakeholders and therefore, further enhance transparency

Corporate governance, ownership structure and voluntary disclosure: Evidence from listed firms in Malaysia

This paper examines the impact of corporate governance and ownership structure on voluntary disclosure practices of Malaysian listed firms. The extent of voluntary disclosure is determined for a matched-sample of 100listed firms in three different disclosure regimes during 1996, 2001 and 2006.The findings suggest that regulatory reforms over the 1996 to 2006 period resulted in enhanced corporate transparency and accountability as reflected in more extensive voluntary disclosures. We provide empirical evidence that the extent of voluntary disclosures is significantly associated with the strength of corporate governance structure in 2001 and 2006 and with ownership structure in 1996, 2001 and 1996. The findings of this study are of use to regulators in terms of guiding policy development regarding corporate transparency of publicly listed firms