Culture and corporate voluntary reporting: A comparative exploration of the chairperson's report in India and New Zealand
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the cultural underpinnings of accounting practices through a comparative analysis of India and New Zealand, using the chairperson's report, which is increasingly becoming one of the most important segments of the corporate annual report.
Design/methodology/approach
The annual reports of Indian and New Zealand companies from 2001 to 2005 were selected to investigate the extent and nature of information disclosure in their chairperson's report. “Content analysis” is the main methodological orientation of the paper.
Findings
The paper argues that, contrary to propositions based on Hofstede's cultural framework, Indian companies provide more disclosure in their chairperson's report than their New Zealand counterparts. This leads to the conclusion that voluntary disclosure, more generally, is a complex phenomenon and cultural variables alone may not be sufficient predictors of the voluntary disclosure practices of a country.
Originality/value
Using India and New Zealand, two countries with significant cultural differences, according to Hofstede's typology, the paper extends the literature by focusing on the chairperson's report, a more recent accounting phenomenon which is gaining popularity across the globe.
Keywords
Citation
Zaman Mir, M., Chatterjee, B. and Shiraz Rahaman, A. (2009), "Culture and corporate voluntary reporting: A comparative exploration of the chairperson's report in India and New Zealand", Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 24 No. 7, pp. 639-667. https://doi.org/10.1108/02686900910975369
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited