Governance Disclosure on the Internet by Leading Indian Public Sector Companies

Abstract

Nowadays, internet satisfying people with different services related to different fields. The profit, as well as non-profit organization, uses the internet for various business purposes. One of the major is communicated various financial as well as non-financial information on their respective websites. This study is conducted on the top 30 BSE listed public sector companies, to measure the extent of governance disclosure (non-financial information) on their web pages. The disclosure index approach to examine the extent of governance disclosure on the internet was used. The governance index was constructed and broadly categorized into three dimensions, i.e., organization and structure, strategy & Planning and accountability, compliance, philosophy & risk management. The empirical evidence of the study reveals that all the Indian public sector companies have a website, and on average, 67% of companies disclosed some kind of governance information directly on their websites. Further, we found extreme variations in the web disclosure between the three categories, i.e., The Maharatans, The Navratans, and Miniratans. However, the result of Kruskal-Wallis indicates that there is no such significant difference between the three categories. The study provides valuable insights into the Indian economy. It explored that Indian public sector companies use the internet for governance disclosure to some extent, but lacks symmetry in the disclosure. It is because there is no such regulation for web disclosure. Thus, the recommendation of the study highlighted that there must be such a regulated framework for the web disclosure so that stakeholders ensure the transparency and reliability of the information.

An Examination of the Quality of Web Disclosure Practices Through an Analysis of Firm Characteristics, Semantic Properties and Tone

“…The sample for this study was the largest 40 companies ranked based on the market capitalisation listed in the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) as of 31 December 2019 with the population consisting of 745 companies. The selection of the largest companies as sample for the study is consistent with prior studies which investigated corporate disclosure practices at the early stage, such as Kaur and Kaur (2020), Singh and Singh (2019), Sadou et al, (2017) and Davey and Homkajohn (2004). The largest 40 representing 5 per cent of total listed companies in Indonesia comprised 70 per cent of the total market capitalization on this date.…”