Factors Influencing Voluntary Corporate Disclosure by Kenyan Companies

Dulacha Galgallo Barako · Phil Hancock · Haji Y. Izan

948 citations0/0 files storedCorporate Governance An International Review

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Auditing, Earnings Management, Governance Corporate Finance and Governance Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Abstract

There has been considerable research in respect of voluntary disclosure by companies and factors that may explain such disclosure. However, most of the research has been centred in developed countries. This study extends the previous literature by examining voluntary disclosure in a developing country, namely Kenya. Over the last decade, the Kenyan Government has initiated several far‐reaching reforms at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) in order to mobilise domestic savings and attract foreign capital investment. These measures include privatisation of state corporations through the stock exchange and allowing foreign investors to own shares in the listed companies. This study provides a longitudinal examination of voluntary disclosure practices in the annual reports of listed companies in Kenya from 1992 to 2001. The study investigates the extent to which corporate governance attributes, ownership structure and company characteristics influence voluntary disclosure practices. Our results suggest that the extent of voluntary disclosure is influenced by a firm's corporate governance attributes, ownership structure and company characteristics. The presence of an audit committee is a significant factor associated with the level of voluntary disclosure, and the proportion of non‐executive directors on the board is found to be significantly negatively associated with the extent of voluntary disclosure. The study also finds that the levels of institutional and foreign ownership have a significantly positive impact on voluntary disclosure. Large companies and companies with high debt voluntarily disclose more information. In contrast, board leadership structure, liquidity, profitability and type of external audit firm do not have a significant influence on the level of voluntary disclosure by companies in Kenya.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 948 citations exist upstream.

References

1976Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure 1983Separation of Ownership and Control 1989Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review 1981Auditor size and audit quality 1997Disclosure level and the cost of equity capital.1993Cross-Sectional Determinants of Analyst Ratings of Corporate Disclosures 2002Culture, Corporate Governance and Disclosure in Malaysian Corporations 2003Corporate governance and voluntary disclosure

Cited by

2014Gender diversity, board independence, environmental committee and greenhouse gas disclosure 2016Corporate Governance and Sustainability Performance: Analysis of Triple Bottom Line Performance 2019Corporate governance and board of directors: The effect of a board composition on firm sustainability performance 2013Corporate Governance and Performance in Socially Responsible Corporations: New Empirical Insights from a Neo‐Institutional Framework 2008Corporate social reporting and board representation: evidence from the Kenyan banking sector

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.