apostolou and nanopoulos - 2009 - voluntary accounting disclosure and cg - evidence from greek listed firms

Int. J. Accounting and Finance, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2009 39
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Voluntary accounting disclosure and corporate
governance: evidence from Greek listed firms

Apostolos K. Apostolou*
and Konstantinos A. Nanopoulos
Department of Public Administration
Panteion University
136 Sygrou Ave., Athens 17671, Greece
E-mail:
E-mail:
*Corresponding author
Abstract: A hypothesis on financial accounting disclosure practices has been
established in prior literature. The hypothesis was that financial accounting
disclosure practices are not arbitrary, but are influenced by company
characteristics and corporate governance. In order to examine the validity
of this hypothesis, two disclosure indexes were built using as sample the
published Annual Reports for 2004 of all the listed manufacturing and
construction companies in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The first index
contains items which are mandatory according to Greek General Accepted
Accounting Principles (GAAP); and the second index contains items which are
mandatory according to a number of selected International Accounting
Standards (IASs) but which were voluntary at the time that the research was
conducted. The study used a cross-section model, in which each type of
disclosure index was regressed on proxy-related variables with corporate
governance and voluntary disclosure in order to detect the existence of a
statistically significant relationship. The major finding of this research is that
there is a significant extent of noncompliance in respect of IASs and the
disclosures of Greek regulations. The key factors associated with the levels of
compliance with IASs include the composition of the Board of Directors,
profitability and the number of common shares. The public firms in the sample
have shown that because of the political cost, the management is forced to
disclose accounting data and support transparency.
Keywords: accounting standardisation; financial reporting; voluntary

disclosure; corporate governance; IFRS; financial accounting; Greece.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Apostolou, A.K. and
Nanopoulos, K.A. (2009) ‘Voluntary accounting disclosure and corporate
governance: evidence from Greek listed firms’, Int. J. Accounting and Finance,
Vol. 1, No. 4, pp.395–414.
Biographical notes: Apostolos K. Apostolou is an Associate Professor of
Accounting at the Department of Public Administration (Section of Taxation
and Auditing), Panteion University, Athens, Greece. He graduated from the
University of Piraeus (BA in Business Administration), and he holds a PhD in
Accounting from the Department of Economics at the University of Athens.
He has professional experience as an Auditor in The Institute of Certified
Public Accountants of Greece, and as Consultant in the Greek Capital Market
Commission. He is the author of many academic and professional articles.