Transparency and disclosure between theory and practice. A case study of Romania

Abstract

As a modern system by which companies are directed and controlled (The Cadbury Report, 1992) – corporate governance have became in the last years a system implemented by more and more companies from developed countries and recently from developing once. Having as starting point one of the principles of corporate governance – transparency – in this paper we focus on aspects that contribute to reach the transparency at corporate level, taking into consideration both regulation and practical issues in Romania, a developing country that have recently adopted the mechanisms of corporate governance. Corporate disclosure is the principal mean by which companies can become transparent, and is critical for the functioning of an efficient capital market (Healy & Palepu, 2001). For this reason we investigate several non-financial items that companies operating on international capital markets are usualy disclosing, looking for the extent to which Bucharest Stock Exchange listed companies are disclosing corporate social responsibility information. The results suggest that is a poor disclosure of social responsability information within the annual reports even the companies are activating in domains with great impact on the environmentcorporate governance, transparency, corporate disclosure, listed companies, corporate responsibility