Research On The Influence Of Corporate Governance And Ethical Regulation On Voluntary Disclosure Of Listed Companies

Abstract:With the development of the securities market and the changes of the living environment of companies, voluntary disclosure has become an effective way to show the "core competence", communicate with stakeholders and depict the future by many large companies. However, if voluntary disclosure cannot ensure its quality, it not only can’t play the role to communicate with investors, but becomes a kind of market noise. China, as a transition and emerging market countries, the formulation and implementation of legal system is not perfect. As a free behavior, in order to ensure the quality of voluntary disclosure of listed companies, it is not enough only by perfecting the traditional formal institution, it also depends on the ethical regulation such as morality, culture and social norms, etc. Therefore, it has an important theoretical value and practical significance from two perspectives of corporate governance and ethical regulation to research voluntary disclosure.In order to improve the quality of voluntary disclosure of listed companies in China, and based on the related literature at home and abroad, the methods of theoretical study, empirical study and case analysis are used in this thesis. As the same time, the research perspective is extended from corporate governance (formal institution) to ethical regulation (informal institution). The thesis analyzes the effect of corporate governance and ethical regulation on voluntary disclosure from the double perspectives, reveals the source of constraining the voluntary disclosure quality, and expands the thinking and depth of theory research of voluntary disclosure.On the basis of elaborating the development course of voluntary disclosure of the American and Chinese listing companies, the thesis selects the annual report of listed companies during the past three years from2009-2011as the research object, builds the new carrier of voluntary disclosure based on the Value Reporting of Enterprise, and voluntary information is divided into corporate strategy information, nonfinancial information and financial information. Research shows:The overall level of voluntary disclosure of listed companies in our country is not high, and the project and industry distribution is imbalanced. There are some other problems existed such as selective disclosure, fuzzy disclosure and delayed disclosure. The research reveals the status of voluntary disclosure of listing companies in China profoundly.Corporate governance is an important factor affecting the voluntary disclosure of listed companies. The research shows that the stock concentration, extent of managerial ownership are positively associated with voluntary disclosure, the times of board meeting is negatively associated with voluntary disclosure, the percentage of institutional investor ownership is no significant relationship with the total level of voluntary disclosure, but is negatively associated with the level of financial score and strategy score. The proportion of independent director is positively associated with financial score, but is no significant relationship with the other score. Percentage of state ownership is no significant relationship with the total score, but is negatively associated with financial sore and strategy score.Voluntary disclosure as a kind of non-mandatory behavior, has its own unique ethical properties. The research to combine with the ethical regulation can better reveal the conflicts of interest and the lack of ethics during the disclosure process. Based on the perspective of the nonformal system of ethical regulation, the thesis carries on a case study based on CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation), and reveals the ethical conflict existed in listed companies in the process of voluntary disclosure. The study founds that the absence of ethics concentrate on the following phenomena:the loss of personal professional ethics leads to the behavioral distortion of voluntary disclosure; the confusion of enterprise ethics leads to the process distortion of voluntary disclosure; the absence of ethical environment leads to the rule distortion of voluntary disclosure.Finally, based on theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, the thesis puts forward a strategic framework of voluntary disclosure. On the basis of the elaboration of the basic principles and the contents of voluntary disclosure, the thesis puts forward that voluntary disclosure should be viewed as a strategic management behavior, and voluntary disclosure framework should be established based on competitive strategy to ensure the realization of competitive strategic objective. The arrangements of system guarantee of corporate governance and ethical regulation are needed to ensure the implementation of the strategic framework.