Corporate governance and intellectual capital disclosures in CEOs’ statements

The purpose of this paper is to study the influences of corporate governance on intellectual capital disclosures in chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) statements in annual reports.

Index score, word count and overall tone of CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures are calculated to represent the extent, amount and tone of these disclosures, respectively. With a sample of 78 FTSE 100 companies, this paper uses content analysis and empirical analysis to examine the impacts of board size, board composition and shares concentration on the above three measures of CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures, controlling for company size, profitability and leverage ratio.

Empirical results demonstrate a significant positive relationship between board composition and the extent, amount and tone of CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures and a significant negative relationship between shares concentration and the amount of these disclosures.

This paper focuses on the impacts of corporate governance on CEOs’ intellectual capital disclosures. It also groundbreakingly measures the tone of CEOs’ disclosures.