Shareholders’ monitoring and online disclosures of minutes of shareholders’ meetings (early view)

Abstract

Limited studies have previously examined online corporate disclosures particularly on Malaysian public listed companies. As such, little is known about the influence of shareholders’ monitoring on the disclosure of shareholders’ meeting minutes on corporate websites. This paper investigated the importance of shareholders’ monitoring through the Minority Shareholders Watch Group (MSWG), Government and institutional ownerships. This paper also incorporated firm size, audit quality, profitability and grey directors as control variables. Based on the 261 companies’ observation, findings showed that shareholders’ monitoring through the MSWG and Government ownership were significant and positively associated with the online meeting minutes disclosure. This implies that shareholder activism can be the advocate in pushing for dissemination of online corporate disclosure by Malaysian companies. Contrary to popular belief, institutional ownership appeared to be an obstacle for further online corporate disclosure. Based on the main findings, the first result is in agreement with agency problem Type I, while the third result is in consensus with agency problem Type II, in explaining the voluntary disclosure practices. Therefore, this finding assists academicians, researchers and policy makers to understand the role of online corporate disclosure.