Mishiel Said Suwaidan, Abeer Fayez Al-Khoury, Ahmad Yousef Areiqat, Samira Omrane Cherrati
This main objective of this study is to examine the impact of a number of variables on the extent of corporate governance disclosure in a firm's annual report. The study analyzes the impact of different variables, including Size of audited company, the existence of audit committee, size of board of directors, number of non-executive members in the board of directors, separated between chairman of board of director and CEO, complexity of firm’s operations, size of company, debt ratio, profitability, ownership concentration and the institutional shareholders) on this level of Disclosure of corporate governance. A disclosure index consisting of thirty-seven items of information covering corporate governance was applied to the annual reports of a sample of 64 companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange for the year 2010. The index is divided into two types of information: compulsory and voluntary. Regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between the extent of disclosure and the explanatory variables. The results of the study revealed that the disclosure level of compulsory items was high and there was no significant variations in the disclosure level between companies. On the other hand, the results indicated that the disclosure level of voluntary items was low and there was a significant variation between companies. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the level of corporate governance disclosure and the existence of audit committee, and the separated between the positions of chairman of board of director and CEO. Also, the study found a negative and significant relationship between the level of corporate governance disclosure and the number of non-executive directors in the board of directors. Finally, the study recommended the conduct of future research that may cover other aspects of the topic and incorporate new variables not covered by the current study.