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Prior research shows that managers with lower ability release less accurate management earnings forecasts and have more earnings restatements, lower earnings persistence and lower quality accruals estimations. Yet, whether the impact of managerial ability (MA) on financial reporting can be extended to the narrative section of firms' financial disclosures needs to be theoretically and empirically examined. The authors theorize in this paper that managers with low ability opportunistically inflate the tone to increase outsiders' perceptions of their ability. The authors also examine the relation between MA and the informativeness of tone to predict future firm performance and explain investors' reaction at earnings announcement.

The authors collect 24,000 earnings press releases of 1,149 distinct firms between 2004 and 2013. Content analysis is used to proxy the tone of the disclosures. The authors use the score developed by Demerjian et al. (2012) to measure MA. The authors then employ panel data regressions to examine the impact of MA on disclosure tone.

The authors find that low-ability managers inflate the disclosure tone to positively influence labor market's perceptions about their ability. This effect is magnified for younger and shorter-tenured managers, for firms with more intense monitoring and during bear markets. The authors also find that the tone of earnings press releases of low-ability managers results in a lower stock price reaction. Supplementary analyses show that the results do not only hold for the tone, but also can be extended to other linguistic features such as the numerical intensity and the readability of earnings press releases. The results are robust to alternative library specifications and other corporate disclosures such as CEO letters to shareholders or 10-K filings.

The paper shows that managers worry about how firm performance influences the labor market assessment of their ability. In particular, the authors find that managers of low ability are willing to opportunistically manipulate the content of corporate disclosures to improve this perception and build their reputation.

The authors contribute by providing theoretical and empirical evidence on how managers attempt to steer assessments of their ability by manipulating corporate disclosures. Consistent with prior business research suggesting that one's ability is a key feature that affects managers' propensity to engage in ethical practices, such as tax avoidance or manipulation of financial information, this study shows that less able managers tend to inflate the tone of the earnings announcements and that this ability-driven bias is likely to be magnified by career concerns.

This study aims to analyse the impact of company performance, company size, ownership structure, board characteristics and other company characteristics on the disclosure of managerial remuneration in 134 listed companies in India from the year 2003 to 2012.

A disclosure and compliance index is developed on the basis of 14 statements prepared regarding the disclosure of managerial remuneration in corporate governance reports of companies. The Papke and Wooldridge (2008) approach is adopted to estimate fractional response models, and fractional probit model is estimated using the generalised estimating equation approach, with an independent working correlation matrix to determine the effect of various company attributes on managerial remuneration disclosure.

The study shows that company size and the presence of remuneration committee are significantly related with the disclosure and compliance index of managerial remuneration. Remuneration disclosure is found to be time-dependent as time dummies for all years are found to be significant.

This study highlights the importance of the formation of remuneration committees on corporate boards. The findings of the present study can be used as inputs for promoting better compliance and comprehensive executive remuneration disclosure.

Nothing concrete in the field of managerial remuneration disclosure (to the best of researcher’s knowledge) has yet been done in an emerging economy such as India. This study aims to address this gap by deriving a disclosure and compliance index for managerial remuneration disclosure and examining the impact of various corporate attributes on it.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of different categories of ownership concentration on corporate voluntary disclosure practices in New Zealand.

The study applies panel data regression analysis to a sample of New Zealand listed companies from 2001 to 2005. Two‐stage least squares analysis (2SLS) is conducted. Ownership concentration is categorised into four mutually exclusive ownership structures.

The paper finds that firm‐year observations characterised by financial institution‐controlled ownership structure tends to make significantly fewer (more) disclosures at high (low) concentration levels supporting expropriation. In contrast, firm‐year observations in the high (low) concentration group with government‐ and management‐controlled ownership structures exhibit considerably higher (lower) voluntary disclosure scores, suggesting a positive monitoring effect at high ownership concentration level.

The results provide evidence for the proposition that the efficiency of large block holders' monitoring varies with the level of ownership concentration.

To promote transparency in capital markets, regulators can encourage or discourage certain types of large shareholding, while monitoring the level of ownership concentration by means of regulation. Investors, especially less sophisticated retail investors, will benefit from the findings that different ownership groups affect disclosure policies differently.

The findings strengthen the importance of differentiating ownership structures into various classes to infer the real impact of differential controlling properties on managerial disclosure decisions. Furthermore, the results reveal that the relationship between ownership concentration and voluntary disclosure practices has a non‐linear pattern.

Goodwill recognized in a business combination is one of the most controversial issues in financial reporting, and is subject to a vast amount of disclosure in the financial statements. Based on the impression management framework, this paper investigates the managerial determinants of compliance with the disclosure requirements on the goodwill impairment test.

The authors construct a disclosure index and hand-collect the information disclosed in the notes to the financial statements. The authors perform univariate and multivariate analyses, estimating panel data models in Spanish IBEX 35 firms, in 2008–2017.

Compliance with the impairment test information requirements is used as an impression management strategy to conceal opportunistic behavior related to non-impairment and signal positive values related to growth opportunities and low leverage.

The results are based on a single country, characterized by low enforcement and although that helps to consider the role of impression management under a compulsory reporting system, it also requires some caution in their generalization.

The results might be useful for advancing the current International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) project, but also for other stakeholders since understanding firms' behavior facilitates making decisions. They might also help managers to reconsider their disclosure strategies towards third parties.

The results may be useful for society, since they show a likely consequence of managerial opportunistic behavior. They could also assist regulators and enforcers to identify firms with incentives for non-compliance.

This study provides a theoretical and conceptual contribution to explain how firms use disclosure as a managerial strategy in a rather different context to the one used in previous research since it focuses on audited and regulated corporate reports. It is based on the impression management as the vehicle to strategically manipulate users' insights and decisions.

The current study dealt with the ownership structure effect as a potential determinant of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance disclosure in the Jordanian context.

Using the content analysis technique, data were collected and analyzed from a final sample of 51 annual reports of Jordanian industrial companies listed for 2012–2019.

The results show that foreign ownership and state ownership play a critical role in disclosing the ESG performance. Also, the board's independence plays an influential role in improving disclosure quality, enhancing family ownership in disclosure. It also limits the negative role of block holder ownership and managerial ownership on the ESG disclosure.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that deals with the role of ownership structure on the ESG disclosure level separately and collectively through the moderating role of board independence.

The paper aims to examine the impact of ownership structure and board composition on voluntary disclosures of listed companies in China.

Using an OLS‐regression model to test the relationship among ownership structure, board composition and the level of voluntary disclosure. The sample is based on 559 firm observations in 2002.

Higher blockholder ownership and foreign listing/shares ownership is associated with increased disclosure. However, managerial ownership, state ownership, and legal‐person ownership are not related to disclosure. An increase in independent directors increases corporate disclosure and CEO duality is associated with lower disclosure. The paper also finds that larger firms had greater disclosure, while firms with growth opportunities are reluctant to disclose information voluntarily.

Firstly, the sample is comprised of companies listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2002 and only 45.7 percent of representative firms listed in China. Secondly, the disclosure checklist does not cover all voluntary disclosure in corporations as employed and supported in several prior studies. Thirdly, the award of checklist items may be subjected to errors.

This paper indicates the relationship among ownership structure, board composition and corporate voluntary disclosure, and provides evidence for Chinese regulators to improve corporate governance and optimize ownership structure.

Distinct from prior empirical research based on disclosure behavior in developed‐western markets, this study examines the impact of ownership structure and board composition on voluntary disclosures of listed companies in the Asian setting of China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the introduction of New Zealand's statutory‐backed continuous disclosure regime enacted in December 2002 on the differential disclosure behaviour of New Zealand firms with good and bad earnings news.

This paper examines the level of information disclosure, analyst forecast error and forecast dispersion, abnormal returns and abnormal volumes for firms with good and bad news earnings announcements in a sample period surrounding reforms to New Zealand's continuous disclosure regime.

The authors find evidence that the pre‐announcement information flow was poorer prior to the reform for bad news firms compared to good news firms, in terms of greater analysts' forecast dispersion and a larger abnormal price reaction to the actual earnings announcement. Second, the reform reduced the asymmetry of information flow between good and bad news firms, with the differences in analysts' forecast dispersion and abnormal price reaction dissipating after the reform.

The findings suggest that the reforms to New Zealand's continuous disclosure regime have reduced managers' propensity to withhold bad news and improved the quality of information provided to investors by firms with bad earnings news.

This study improves our understanding of the impact of disclosure reform on the behaviour of managers in a market with relatively low liquidity and less litigation risk in comparison to larger and more developed markets.

Stakeholders' uncertainty about firms' value drives their urge to get information, as well as managerial disclosure choices. In this study, the authors examine whether and how an important source of uncertainty – the recent COVID-19 pandemic's effect on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure – is beyond managerial and stakeholders' control.

The authors develop a novel construct for daily CSR disclosure by employing computer-aided text analysis (CATA) on the press releases issued by 125 New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) listed from 28 February 2020 to 31 December 2020. To capture COVID-19 intensity, the authors use the growth rate of the population-adjusted cumulative sum of confirmed cases in New Zealand on a specific day. To examine the association between the COVID-19 outbreak and companies' CSR disclosure, the authors employed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression by clustering standard error at the firm level.

The authors find a one standard deviation increase in the COVID-19 outbreak leads to a 28% increase in such disclosures. These results remained robust to a series of sensitivity tests and continue to hold after accounting for potential endogeneity concerns. In the channel analysis, the study demonstrates that the positive relationship between COVID-19 and CSR disclosure is more pronounced in the presence of a well-structured board (i.e. a large, more independent board and with a higher proportion of women on it). In further analysis, the authors find the documented relationship varies over the pandemic's life cycle and is moderated by government stringency response, peer CSR pressure and media coverage.

This paper is the first study that contributes to the scant literature examining the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on CSR disclosure. Prior research either investigates the relationship of the CSR-stock return during the COVID-19 market crisis or examines the relationship between corporate characteristics including the quality of financial information and the reactions of stock returns during COVID-19. The authors extend such studies by providing empirical evidence that managers respond to COVID-19 by increasing CSR disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential influence of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure quality in Tunisia.

The authors examine 152 annual reports of Tunisian non-financial-listed firms during 2008–2013, and use the manual content analysis method to measure the risk disclosure quality.

The authors find that the quality of risk disclosure in Tunisian companies is relatively low, and also find that the quality of risk disclosure is positively associated with institutional ownership, board independence, the presence of women on the board, the presence of family members on the board and the independence of audit committee. Managerial ownership has a negative effect on risk disclosure quality. Finally, the authors find that the revolution decreases the influence of concentration ownership, government ownership, family ownership and audit committee size on risk disclosure quality.

Using a comprehensive set of corporate governance mechanisms and a new measure for risk disclosure quality in Tunisia, the authors provide the first empirical evidence on the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure quality in a developing country. The study has theoretical and practical implications for both developed and developing countries.

This paper provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date (1997–2016) review of the archival empirical risk-reporting literature. The reviewed papers are classified into two principal themes: the incentives for and/or informativeness of risk reporting. Our review demonstrates areas of significant divergence in the literature specifically: mandatory versus voluntary risk reporting, manual versus automated content analysis, within-country versus cross-country variations in risk reporting, and risk reporting in financial versus non-financial firms. Our paper identifies a number of issues which require further research. In particular we draw attention to two: first, a lack of clarity and consistency around the conceptualization of risk; and second, the potential costs and benefits of standard-setters’ involvement.