Title: Voluntary disclosures in formal reports: influence of a third dimension? - Evidence from India

Authors: John Ben Prince; Neeraj Dwivedi

Addresses: Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Bengaluru, A Constituent of Symbiosis International (Deemed University), 95/1, 95/2, Electronic City Phase I, Hosur Road, Bangalore 560100, India ' Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, Prabandh Nagar, IIM Road, Lucknow 226013, India

Abstract: Research in corporate governance has often looked at the impact of firms': 1) financial parameters; 2) governance and board characteristics on their voluntary disclosures. This study explores the influence of strategy, a potential third dimension, on disclosures. Analysing disclosures using heuristic-based content analysis from the annual reports of Indian firms in the financial year 2016-2017, the findings revealed the impact of foreign institutional investor stake and CEO duality on voluntary disclosures. Financial parameters did not have any impact on disclosures of firms. However, for the strategy dimension, multinationality was found to have a weak impact on disclosures. A higher level of transparency shown in the form of voluntary disclosures is often of interest to foreign institutional shareholders that hold ownership stakes. For firms, it implies that higher level of transparency and release of additional qualitative information is likely to find interest among the stakeholder community, both domestic and overseas.

Keywords: corporate governance; voluntary disclosures; content analysis; letters to shareholders; LTS; strategic flexibility; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCG.2020.115513

International Journal of Corporate Governance, 2020 Vol.11 No.3/4, pp.317 - 340

Received: 18 Sep 2020
Accepted: 04 Feb 2021
Published online: 07 Jun 2021 *

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