Climate change poses substantial risks to the insurance industry, affecting underwriting activities, claims volatility, and long-term investment decisions. As key actors in economy-wide risk management, insurance companies are increasingly expected to communicate transparently about climate-related risks and strategies. Despite growing attention to the relationship between climate change and insurance, limited research has examined the determinants of climate change disclosure (CCD), particularly from a governance perspective. Drawing on agency theory, this study investigates the level of CCD among global insurance companies and analyzes how governance characteristics influence the dissemination of climate-related information through official corporate websites. The empirical analysis is conducted on a sample of 180 insurance companies distributed across 54 countries using an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model. The findings reveal that board independence, board gender diversity, and the presence of a CSR committee are positively associated with CCD, whereas board size and board tenure are not significantly associated with CCD. These results underscore the importance of governance structures in enhancing transparency and accountability in climate-related communication within the global insurance industry.
This study examines the relationship between CEO duality and EBITDA-oriented reporting practices, as well as the moderating role of board governance mechanisms. Drawing on agency theory and the opportunistic perspective of non-GAAP reporting, the study argues that CEO duality increases managerial discretion and incentives to rely on EBITDA-oriented disclosures. Conversely, stronger board governance is expected to mitigate this relationship through more effective monitoring. Using probit regression models on a sample of European listed firms included in the STOXX Europe Large 200 over the 2020–2025 period, the results show that CEO duality is positively associated with the disclosure and use of EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, EBITDA-based ratios, and EBITDA-related compensation measures. The findings further indicate that board governance significantly moderates this relationship, with the conditional effects varying across governance mechanisms and becoming more constraining at moderate or high governance levels. This study contributes to the literature on non-GAAP reporting and corporate governance by highlighting EBITDA as a governance-related discretionary reporting instrument shaped by managerial incentives and monitoring effectiveness.
This study examines whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending is associated with the readability of narrative financial disclosures and whether this relationship is moderated by firms’ financial constraints. Drawing on signalling theory, we argue that readability functions as a strategic communication tool, particularly when firms face credibility constraints. Using a panel of non-financial firms listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in India from 2017 to 2022, we analyse the readability of the Management Discussion and Analysis (MDA) section of annual reports. Readability is measured using the negative logarithm of the Fog Index, CSR engagement is proxied by CSR expenditure scaled by average profit after tax, and financial constraints are captured using the Size–Age Index. Using fixed-effects estimations, we find that higher CSR spending is associated with more readable MDA disclosures, with the effect being significantly stronger for financially constrained firms. Subsample analyses further indicate that this relationship is more pronounced among standalone and larger firms. The findings contribute to the disclosure and governance literature by showing that readability is a strategic disclosure choice in institutional settings characterised by mandatory CSR expenditure but discretionary narrative communication.
This study examines how Saudi Exchange-listed companies disclose data privacy governance in their annual reports across five sectors over the period 2019–2024, with particular focus on differences in how disclosures are framed in Arabic and English versions of the same report. Drawing on qualitative content analysis of 60 paired annual reports from 10 companies, the study spans three regulatory phases: pre-PDPL, implementation, and full enforcement. A Data Privacy Disclosure Maturity Model (DPDMM) is developed to classify disclosures as symbolic, narrative-driven, or substantive, and intercoder reliability is confirmed through double-coding, achieving a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.81. The findings reveal a consistent dual framing structure across the sampled firms. Arabic disclosures adopt a compliance-oriented tone aligned with domestic regulatory expectations, whereas English disclosures frame privacy governance as a strategic and value-enhancing capability in a register oriented towards international investors. This divergence recurs across sectors and over time, although its magnitude and form vary across firms, sectors, and years. While disclosure maturity improves following PDPL enforcement, a persistent gap remains between narrative sophistication and underlying governance practices. Sectoral differences are also evident, with financial services and telecommunications firms producing more substantive disclosures, while firms in the industrial and materials and healthcare and insurance sectors rely primarily on symbolic statements. The study extends existing Saudi corporate-reporting research on narrative disclosure and environmental reporting into the data privacy governance domain. It addresses this domain through a direct comparison of matched Arabic and English disclosures, using a longitudinal, sector-stratified design anchored to a defined regulatory arc. In doing so, it extends framing theory to a dual-language corporate reporting environment. It also introduces the DPDMM as a replicable coding framework and offers a longitudinal, sector-based analysis of disclosure evolution across the full PDPL regulatory cycle.
As companies strive to promote more transparent, comparable, and reliable financial reporting, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have emerged as the dominant global accounting framework. Although a substantial body of research has examined the relationship between IFRS adoption and financial reporting quality, the evidence remains fragmented and often context-dependent. Against this backdrop, this study maps the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and research dynamics of the IFRS adoption and financial reporting quality literature through a systematic bibliometric and science-mapping analysis. The study examines 419 publications indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases over the period 2006–2025. Using Bibliometrix, Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and Python-assisted data processing, the analysis combines reference co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and thematic mapping techniques. The results reveal three major intellectual streams. The first highlights the role of institutional and regulatory environments in shaping financial reporting quality. The second focuses on the methodological foundations used to measure earnings management, accrual quality, and reporting quality. The third examines the consequences of IFRS adoption for accounting quality, disclosure practices, comparability, and capital market outcomes. The thematic analysis further highlights the growing importance of governance mechanisms, audit quality, enforcement systems, and information asymmetry within contemporary IFRS research. Overall, the findings suggest that research on IFRS adoption has progressively evolved from a standards-oriented perspective toward a broader consideration of institutional, governance and regulatory factors shaping financial reporting outcomes. This study provides academics, regulators, standard setters and policymakers with a broad, systematically defined overview of the intellectual foundations, thematic developments and future directions of IFRS adoption and financial reporting quality research.
