DETERMINANTS OF CORPORATE VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURES IN ANNUAL REPORTS: EVIDENCE FROM ETHIOPIAN COMMERCIAL BANKS
Abstract
Corporate disclosures is a formal-sounding term for making information accessible to interested and affected parties. Henceforth, in excess of mandatory disclosures companies are voluntary disclosed information. The voluntary disclosure level is different from company to company and there are some factors which are affecting to this variation. Therefore, the aims of this study were to identify the extent of voluntary disclosure level and its determinants. In order to achieve these objectives the study developed a voluntary disclosure index including 65 items grouped into nine categories by employing content analysis in the annual reports of commercial banks in Ethiopia for the time period of 2017/18 to 2020/2021. Furthermore, this study used Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression model to test the association between commercial bank attributes and voluntary disclosure practices. The study revealed that disclosures about corporate strategy were the highest and the level of corporate governance information is the lowest level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports of the study time periods. Furthermore, the study indicate that there is a positive relationship between commercial bank age, size and return on asset and voluntary disclosure, which is statistically significant. The findings also revealed the extent of voluntary disclosure in annual reports is not significantly influenced by other commercial bank attributes. The current empirical study contributes investigations in the commercial banks and provides new insight into determinants of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports of commercial banks in Ethiopian context
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