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In this paper, we examine the factors that are likely to explain the use of the internet as a vehicle for voluntary financial reporting by companies in Bahrain and Kuwait. A total of 75 companies (Kuwait 42 and Bahrain 33) were investigated to find out if they had websites and presented their financial statements on the internet. For Kuwait, 47.6% and for Bahrain 48.5% of sample companies had their own websites. Six variables were tested to examine their influence on the financial reporting by companies on the internet. A discriminant analysis was performed on the data and the results indicated that size (log of total assets) and industry were the main factors which influenced the financial reporting practices of companies on the internet. These results are in line with prior evidence. There is some indication that risk may also contribute to some extent in such decision. Perceptions of advantages and problems in using this new technology for financial reporting were also examined. It appears that the usage of this technology is still limited and slow in this part of the world, perhaps because of cultural dimensions and constraints.

The purpose of this paper is to provide exploratory evidence about the use of the internet for disclosure purposes by non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Exchange – and influences thereon – at two points in time: 2010 and 2011. Selection of these periods permits direct investigation of the extent to which the disruption caused by the popular uprising in early 2011 impacted on practice.

The sample comprises all of the 172 non-financial listed companies at the end of 2010. A disclosure index was developed to evaluate the content of the investigated websites in 2010 and 2011. Univariate and multivariate analysis is used to examine the cross-sectional determinants of disclosure both in total and in terms of three specific content categories.

The study reveals that 40.7 and 42.7 per cent of the sample companies provided some form of financial information via their websites in 2010 and 2011, respectively (i.e. pre and post the Spring 2011 political revolution). The results of the multivariate analysis indicate consistency across the two years in terms of total score determinants, but some variation in the disaggregated evidence.

This study indicates that Egyptian firms have started embracing the power of the internet as a disclosure channel, but the extent of these practices is still limited, with great variations evident amongst the sampled companies in this regard. Encouragingly, the disruption caused by the political upheaval in 2011 appears not to have caused reduction in the propensity to provide online disclosures.

This chapter assesses the effects of corporate governance (CG) variables on the level of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure (CSRD), Shari'ah Supervisory Board Disclosure (SSBD), and Financial Disclosure (FD) for Islamic banks. This study, based on a sample of 95 Islamic banks, assessed this in 2013. The findings suggest that CG mechanisms, firm's age, auditor and shari'ah auditing department are effective in influencing SSBD, CSRD, and FD practices in Islamic banks. This chapter encourages regulators to improve CG mechanisms in their Islamic banking systems through the optimization of ownership structure (dispersed ownership) and the board's characteristics in order to promote transparency and disclosure. Moreover, the findings support theoretical arguments that firms disclose CG information in order to mitigate information asymmetry and agency costs and to improve investor confidence in the reported financial statements. The empirical evidence of this study enhances the understanding of the CG disclosure environment in Islamic banks as a promoting new financial system.

This paper aims to investigate corporate internet reporting (CIR) by Kenyan and Tanzanian listed companies and whether the level of CIR is related to corporate governance structures.

The authors collect data over a four-year period from companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange and the Dar es Salaam Securities Exchange. Panel data models (random effects) are used for the analysis.

The results indicate that the level of CIR in both countries is high, but the highest in Kenya. The authors find that CIR increases with foreign ownership, audit committee independence and financial expertise but decreases with domestic ownership concentration. They also show that the effects of ownership concentration are moderated by country-specific factors. Overall, the results demonstrate that effective governance structures may lead to higher levels CIR in sub-Saharan Africans.

This study extends, as well as contributes to the existing literature by the examining the corporate governance-disclosure nexus relating to CIR in sub-Saharan Africa. These findings have policy implications for African countries looking to attract foreign investment.

The chapter aims to analyse the influence of the board of directors on transparency and integrity in hybrid organisations like state-owned enterprises. The effect of several characteristics of directors on the board’s effectiveness was assessed. The empirical analysis was based on 60 Italian listed and non-listed state-owned enterprises. Each enterprise’s website was individually examined and coded to obtain two self-constructed indexes on transparency and integrity, and a regression model was created to test the hypotheses.

The ‘knowledge structure’ of interlocking directors and board compensation were found to be both positively related to the level of commitment among state-owned enterprises to transparency and integrity. Skill and gender diversity on the board had no significant impact. The analysis used data from a one-year period but dealt with hidden and complex phenomena like corruption. Future longitudinal studies and qualitative approaches would provide more comprehensive insights into the relationship between the board of directors, transparency and integrity over time.

Policymakers and all those involved in the appointment of directors to state-owned enterprises should be aware that some features of board members may affect the levels of organisational transparency and integrity. The chapter contributes to the literature on governance of state-owned enterprises, emphasising the board’s role and its effectiveness in sustaining transparency and integrity.

The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of the determinants and characteristics of voluntary internet financial disclosures by large companies in Slovenia. With this research, the authors wanted to determine the factors which impact on the differences between companies that use internet financial reporting and those that do not.

The research was conducted on a sample of large companies in Slovenia (n = 192), which was divided into two groups, depending on whether they use internet financial reporting. A binary logistic regression was undertaken to assess whether voluntary disclosure of financial information on the internet was related to the company’s size, profitability, age, company’s legal form, ownership dispersion and industry sector.

The research has shown that there is a statistically significant difference between the companies which use or do not use internet financial reporting. The likelihood that the companies will publish the internet financial information is greater in the case of public limited companies, companies that deal with the financial, energy or ICT sectors and companies that have a larger ownership concentration.

This is one of the first studies in Slovenia that was used to determine the factors according to which the companies that use internet financial reporting differentiate from those that do not.

This study aims to examine the association between firm size, profitability, leverage, auditor type and internet reporting and investigate the moderating effect of legal system, investor protection, masculinity, economic development, construction of disclosure index and measurement proxies of independent variables.

This study conducts a meta-analytic review for 59 research papers to synthesise quantitatively the results of previous literature on the determinants of internet reporting. This study uses Hunter and Schmidt’s (2004) procedures to conduct the analysis. There are three main procedures to be followed: calculating the weighted effect size, calculating observed correlation variance and sampling error variance and, finally, testing for homogeneity and moderating effects.

The results indicate a significant positive association between firm size, profitability, leverage, auditor type and internet reporting. The results confirm the prediction of agency theory, signalling theory, political cost hypothesis and diffusion of innovation theory. Moreover, the results show that investor protection, masculinity, economic development, construction of disclosure index and measurement proxies for independent variables moderate the association between profitability, leverage and internet reporting.

This study suffers from some limitations. First, corporate governance variables such as board size, role duality and board independence were not included in the analysis due to the limited number of studies that discuss the association between corporate governance and internet reporting. Second, the study does not control for the endogeneity problem.

Future research has to consider the moderating effect of investor protection, masculinity, economic development, construction of disclosure index and measurement proxies for independent variables on the association between corporate characteristics and internet reporting. Future research can extend this work by examining the association between corporate governance, ownership structure and internet reporting. The findings regarding the determinants of internet reporting should be on concern of regulatory authorities.

This study contributes to and extends previous meta-analysis literature by examining internet reporting determinants, as previous financial reporting meta-analysis studies give no attention to internet reporting.

The emergence of social media as a corporate disclosure channel has caused significant changes in the production and dissemination of corporate information. This review identifies important themes in recent research on the impact of social media on the corporate information environment and provides suggestions for further explorations of this new but fast-growing area of research. Specifically, we first review the evolution of Internet-based corporate disclosure and related regulations, and then focus on three recent streams of research: 1) companies’ use of social media; 2) information produced by non-corporate users and its impact on capital markets; and 3) the credibility of corporate information on social media platforms.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the utilization of the internet by the Turkish companies listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) for corporate reporting; to determine the company characteristics that influence the information disclosure level on the internet; and to investigate whether there is a significant difference between the firms listed in the Corporate Governance Index of the ISE and those that are not, in terms of level of disclosure on the corporate web sites.

The methodology of the study was content analysis of corporate web sites of corporations listed on the ISE.

Firms, which are listed in the ISE Corporate Governance Index (XCORP), disclose significantly more information on corporate web sites compared to the firms that are not listed in the XCORP. In addition, the results indicate that firm size and being listed in the XCORP are significant explanatory variables for the total disclosure score on the corporate web sites, while industry and profitability are not.

Since the study was conducted on a sample of listed companies on the ISE, the findings are not necessarily representative of non‐listed companies.

The study contributes to the scarce literature on internet reporting in developing countries and it incorporates the XCORP in the predictors of information disclosure level on corporate web sites.

This study investigated the investor relations activities on the Internet of companies that are listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). For this purpose, the home pages of the JSE Top 40 companies were searched and screened for investor relations items. A three‐stage model was used. The results of the study indicate that companies use more advanced features of the Internet for investor relations in comparison with previous studies undertaken in other countries. Most companies in SA appear to be in the second stage of Internet investor relations. The leading companies in SA are ready to enter the third stage of Internet investor relations.