Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential influence of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure quality in Tunisia. Design/methodology/approach The authors examine 152 annual reports of Tunisian non-financial-listed firms during 2008–2013, and use the manual content analysis method to measure the risk disclosure quality. Findings The authors find that the quality of risk disclosure in Tunisian companies is relatively low, and also find that the quality of risk disclosure is positively associated with institutional ownership, board independence, the presence of women on the board, the presence of family members on the board and the independence of audit committee. Managerial ownership has a negative effect on risk disclosure quality. Finally, the authors find that the revolution decreases the influence of concentration ownership, government ownership, family ownership and audit committee size on risk disclosure quality. Originality/value Using a comprehensive set of corporate governance mechanisms and a new measure for risk disclosure quality in Tunisia, the authors provide the first empirical evidence on the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on risk disclosure quality in a developing country. The study has theoretical and practical implications for both developed and developing countries.

We investigate the joint effect of corporate risk disclosure (CRD) and corporate governance (CG) on firm value in Tunisia.Design/methodology/approach: We examine a sample of 156 firm-observations of Tunisian listed companies during 2008-2013. A manual content analysis method is used to measure the level of risk disclosure. Findings:We find that CRD a negative and significant effect on firm value. In addition, family ownership negatively affects firm value. However, board size, the independence of the audit committee, and the presence of the women on the board lead to greater firm value. We find a substitution effect between CRD and CG mechanisms on the firm value.Originality/value: This paper adds to risk disclosure studies by examining the economic consequences of CRD in emerging market. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the literature by being the first study, to the best of our knowledge, which investigates the joint effect of CRD and CG mechanisms on firm value.

No abstract

In this paper, we extend corporate disclosure and corporate cash holdings literature by testing whether corporate voluntary risk disclosure affects corporate cash holdings for a sample of Tunisian non-financial listed companies. As a measure of risk disclosure, we use manual content analysis to count the number of risk-related sentences in the narrative sections of corporate annual reports. As a measure of corporate cash holdings, we use the ratio of cash and cash equivalent over the total assets. Using a sample of 140 firm-year observations for the period of 2008–2013, we find that corporate risk disclosure has a negative impact on corporate cash holdings. Our results are consistent with agency, legitimacy and impression management theories. Our paper adds to the existing literature by being the first empirical evidence for the impact of risk disclosure on cash holdings. Our findings offer policy implications relevant for the current debate on the reliability of narrative risk disclosure and whether managers inform or obfuscate stakeholders by disclosing more risk-related information in their annual report narratives.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate R&D investments in family firms. Design/methodology/approach The socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective, considered as a dominant paradigm in the family business field, is the theoretical framework used to report different behaviors ascertained within family firms. This paper focuses on two dimensions of the SEW, namely, family control and influence and family identity. A suspected moderating role played by the firm’s life cycle stage on the dimensions is also investigated using panel data. To analyze the results, this paper uses the Smart PLS software on secondary data collected for 76 German family firms. Findings The empirical results reveal a negative influence of SEW on R&D investments. The prominent effect of the family control and influence dimension on R&D is higher in the first part of a firm life cycle. Research limitations/implications The analysis of this study is subject to several caveats. First, to measure the R&D investment, this paper used R&D intensity computed as the total annual R&D expenses by total sales. Except for the fact that the use of proxies received several criticizes from scholars (Berrone et al., 2012) claiming how they do not directly relate to the essence of the dimensions measured. Second, this paper used two out of five FIBER dimensions only in the study. This paper took the right direction, but still, the complexity of SEW may not be fully captured following this approach (Berrone et al., 2012). Originality/value This study could be considered as an important extension of prior research investigating R&D in family firms. The authors provide a valid empirical construct, the FIBER scale, to capture non-monotonic behaviors in family firms and an enlargement of the family firms and innovation management field of research.