Voluntary disclosure and earnings quality: evidence from ownership concentration environment

Purpose This study aims to investigate the relationship between earnings quality and corporate voluntary disclosure among Malaysian listed companies. Moreover, it examines the moderating effect of the ownership structure on the relationship between earnings quality and corporate voluntary disclosure. Design/methodology/approach This study covers 300 companies listed on Bursa Malaysia. It has used strategic, financial and non-financial information to measure voluntary disclosure; earnings management, persistence and smoothness to measure earnings quality; and institutional and managerial shareholders to measure ownership structure. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to investigate if ownership structure moderates the relationship between earnings quality and corporate voluntary disclosure. Findings The results in this work imply that companies with high earnings quality are more likely to disclose voluntary information to help stakeholders. Furthermore, this study provides original evidence that institutional ownership and managerial ownership play a main role as moderating variables that influence management motives toward practices of voluntary disclosure and earnings quality. Originality/value Because of the limited number of empirical studies on the relationship between voluntary disclosure and earnings quality, this study fills a gap in the literature by investigating the relationship between them. In addition, a lack of research exists on the effects of ownership structure on the relationship between voluntary disclosure and the earnings quality. Therefore, this study makes an original contribution to the literature by using institutional and managerial ownership as moderating variables to investigate the effects of the ownership structure on the relationship between voluntary disclosure and earnings quality in Malaysian companies.