The Study On The Influence Of The Characteristics Of Independent Directors To The Quality Of Accounting Information Disclosure

In order to promote the standardized operation of listed companies, strengthen the supervision of company management, balance shareholders’ rights and protect the interests of minority shareholders, the China securities regulatory commission formally issued "the guidance on establishing the independent director system of listed companies" in August 16, 2001, marking that china has formally introduced the independent director system. The ultimate goal of setting up the independent director system is to protect the interests of minority shareholders. Although the quality of accounting information disclosure of listed companies has improved since the independent director system has been implemented in the past 10 years, the fact that accounting information of listed companies hasn’t been disclosed timely and even deliberately fraud has happened frequently. The independent director system, therefore, hasn’t played a proper role in raising the quality of accounting information disclosure of listed companies. Based on this, this paper takes the principal-agent theory, asymmetric information theory and efficient market theory as the guide, investigating the four characteristics of independent directors, which is the proportion of independent directors of the director board, independent director’s compensation, the proportion of independent directors meeting attendance and the number of independent director’s office, producing impact on the quality of the accounting information disclosure of listed companies.This article selects the A-share listed companies in Shenzhen stock exchange from 2009-2013 as the research sample, combining the method of normative research and empirical research to investigate the characteristics of independent directors producing impact on the quality of the accounting information disclosure of listed companies. The results show that:(1)The relationship between proportion of independent directors and the accounting information disclosure quality is not obvious. As independent directors proportion in the listed companies is the rigid requirements in China. However, it not fully reflects the specific needs of corporate governance, leading to the same proportion of independent directors of board seats, mostly around one third. Moreover, the board of directors of the listed companies in China nowadays are nominated or appointed almost by the big shareholder or actual controller, which is difficult to guarantee the independence of the independent director.(2)There is a positive relationship between the independent director compensation and the accounting information disclosure quality. It is beneficial to improve the work enthusiasm of the independent director, to enhance the responsibility of the independent director, to strengthen the supervision of listed companies if the companies are willing to improve the independent director compensation to some degree, which is help to improve the quality of accounting information disclosure.(3)There is a significantly positive relationship between the proportion of independent directors meeting attendance and the quality of accounting information disclosure. it is beneficial to let the independent directors to attend the board meeting as it can let they understand the company’s production and operation situation and it is the main way to access to company information. The higher the independent directors meeting attendance, the more time the independent directors to get the company information and understand the company production and business operation activities, so the independent directors will be able to ensure the quality of accounting information disclosure of listed companies.(4)There is also a significantly positive relationship between the number of independent director’s office and the accounting information disclosure quality. Because the CSRC requires that the independent directors should work the less than 5 companies to ensure that the independent directors have enough time and energy to perform their duties. How many companies the Independent director works is also the embodiment of social reputation to some extent. The independent director who has a good reputation always works in more companies and they will work more diligently to maintain their reputation.This paper is divided into six parts, the specific structure is as follows: the first part is introduction, mainly telling research background, significance of topics, research ideas and research methods and framework of this article writing; The second part is the literature review, summarizing the relevant literature on characteristics of independent directors, the quality of accounting information disclosure, independent directors characteristics, which produce impact on the quality of accounting information disclosure at home and abroad, fully understanding the predecessors’ research results and research methods and using the research achievements of predecessors to open the research direction of this article; Definition and theoretical analysis; The third part is conception definition and theoretical analysis, which mainly definite the definition of the independent directors, independent directors characteristics and the definition of accounting information disclosure, and analyze the basis of the relevant theoretical, namely the principal-agent theory, asymmetric information theory and efficient market theory; The fourth part is the research hypotheses and research design. In accordance with the relevant theoretical basis and relevant research results, this paper proposes the theory hypothesis of characteristics of independent directors on the quality of accounting information disclosure, choosing reasonable variables and samples, and then based on the hypothesis to build relevant regression model; The fifth part is the empirical study results and analysis, mainly using SPSS19.0 to analyze the descriptive statistics of the data, according to the proposed model proceed the correlation analysis and regression analysis to get the conclusion finally; The sixth part is conclusion, according to the result of theoretical assumptions and data regression, summarizing the conclusions, and putting forward relevant suggestions. Specific policy recommendations include: perfecting the independent director selection mechanism, improving the independent director salary system, establishing the independent director assessment mechanism and promoting the development of professionalization of the independent director.