Corporate governance and different types of voluntary disclosure

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate governance on voluntary disclosure of different types of information in annual reports of Malaysian listed firms. Design/methodology/approach A linear regression model is used to test the association between the level of voluntary disclosure of five key information categories and corporate governance. The sample consists of 100 firms over three different socio‐economic periods: 1996, 2001 and 2006. Findings There are significant increases in all the key information categories with better communication most pronounced between 1996 and 2001, and a noticeably lower level of communication growth between 2001 and 2006. The strength of a firm's corporate governance structure clearly influences the voluntary disclosure of information relating to corporate and strategic directions, directors and senior management, financial and capital markets, forward‐looking projections and corporate social responsibility in 2001 and 2006. Research limitations/implications The use of a governance index to arrive at an overall corporate governance score has the potential to mask major underlying relationships of individual governance attributes. The use of the self‐constructed disclosure indices may also omit certain information items that are employed in other prior studies. Moreover, the different categories of disclosures are solely constructed on the information disclosed in the annual reports without considering the alternative avenues. Practical implications The results will assist regulators and policy‐makers to better understand the impact of corporate governance on the voluntary disclosure of different types of corporate information in Malaysia. Originality/value This study generates evidence of the changing scene of management voluntary disclosure practices embedded in the corporate governance framework in a developing country with an emerging capital market.