Title: Can board governance and financial performance be a matter for corporate disclosure tones?

Authors: Zainab Abdulwahed Al-Alwani; Gehan A. Mousa

Addresses: Accounting Department, College of Business Administration, University of Bahrain, P.O. Box 32028, Kingdom of Bahrain ' Accounting Department, College of Business Administration, University of Bahrain, P.O. Box 32028, Kingdom of Bahrain

Abstract: The study investigates the effect of board characteristics and firm performance on disclosure tones by considering DICTION five master variables namely activity, optimism, certainty, realism and commonality tones using a sample of 779 annual reports of GCC listed firms (2012 to 2018). Disclosure tones of the sampled GCC firms were measured through corporate narrative disclosures by DICTION 7.0 software. Then, the ordinary least square regression analysis was conducted. The main findings of the study show that firm performance has a significant effect on disclosure tones in terms of activity, optimism, certainty, and realism tones except for commonality reported tone. Board characteristics have different effects on the five disclosure tones. The study offers a unique contribution to accounting literature as it is one of the first studies in the Gulf region that seeks to examine the relationship between disclosure tones and firm performance as well as board governance.

Keywords: disclosure tones; firm performance; board characteristics; GCC countries.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBGE.2022.126177

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2022 Vol.16 No.4, pp.377 - 402

Received: 03 Feb 2021
Accepted: 12 Apr 2021
Published online: 14 Oct 2022 *

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