Corporate governance and voluntary risk and forward-looking disclosures
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate governance on risk and forward-looking disclosures in Qatar.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors automatically measure levels of risk and forward-looking disclosures in the annual reports of Qatari firms for the period 2008–2014. The authors also use two ways clustered error pooled panel regressions to examine the determinants of these disclosures.
Findings
The authors find that firms with a higher percentage of foreign ownership disclose more forward-looking information; conversely, board size has a negative impact on the forward-looking disclosure. Financial firms tend to disclose less forward-looking information, however, they tend to disclose more forward-looking information after the 2008 global financial crisis. The authors also find negative relationships between the risk disclosure and both the number of non-executive members of the board of directors and duality role of the CEO.
Research limitations/implications
The study uses the quantity of disclosure as a proxy for the quality of disclosure.
Practical implications
The findings should help the users of corporate annual reports in Qatar to understand managerial incentives for reporting risk and forward-looking information. This should help regulators to set a proper set of disclosure rules. Moreover, this study increases our understanding of the behavior of international investors and the board characteristics (i.e. board size) in motivating risk and forward-looking disclosures in Qatari firms.
Originality/value
The authors provide the original empirical evidence on the impact of corporate ownership and board characteristics on risk and forward-looking disclosures for Qatari firms using two ways clustered error pooled panel regressions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editor of JAAR (Dr Julia Mundy) and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on this research. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Qatar National Research Fund (NPRP7-364 -5-048). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Dr Mohammed Elgammal is in a sabbatical leave from Faculty of commerce, Menoufia University, Egypt.
Citation
Elgammal, M.M., Hussainey, K. and Ahmed, F. (2018), "Corporate governance and voluntary risk and forward-looking disclosures", Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 592-607. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAAR-01-2017-0014
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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