Board independence and disclosure quality of the UK Investor Relation Magazine Award winning public firms: a matched-pair analysis

Abstract

We examine the interactions between board independence and disclosure quality for the UK Investor Relation Magazine Award (IRMA) winning firms being experimental sample, and control sample of non-winning firms. We provide strong evidence of positive reciprocal relationships between board independence and disclosure quality after controlling for a set of internal and external governance variables. We further document complementary effects of some internal and external governance variables on disclosure quality. With regard to matched-pair sample we find little difference between IRMA winning and non-winning firms in terms of their disclosure quality and governance practices, except higher (lower) coefficient value and stronger (smaller) effect of board independence (disclosure quality) on disclosure quality (board independence) for former firms than latter firms. These findings have policy implications for companies/regulators/stakeholders to take appropriate strategies in firms' governance and disclosure settings since the selection of flexible disclosure choice is persuasive to the extent of board independence.