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Transparency through European corporate governance codes

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Abstract

Prior studies barely include transparency when analyzing Corporate Governance Codes. This article reflects the shortcomings of those codes in relation to transparency and proposes a new perspective beyond the concept of disclosure as dissemination of information. In this sense, it investigates how well transparency is advocated in 24 European Corporate Governance Codes by assessing not only what information is posed in the recommendations, rules or guidelines of each code, but also who is responsible to communicate, to whom or how that information should be communicated. Codes are classified according to the issuer type and the country’s legal system, testing differences by using the Kruskal–Wallis test. Our results support the idea that the characteristics of the issuer type – and not the country’s legal system – explain differences regarding transparency among Corporate Governance Codes. Our article is especially relevant for policy makers because it reflects the importance of a multidisciplinary team when developing future updates of Corporate Governance Codes.

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Notes

  1. The ANOVA test is appropriate if the independent variables are normal. As the sample is n<30, Shapiro–Wilk test has been conducted to test normality, considering the null hypothesis that the population is normally distributed. As at least one of the groups was not normally distributed, Kruskal–Wallis test instead of one-way ANOVA was conducted to test whether the issuer type or legal regime involves statistical differences in the level of transparency.

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  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Cantabria, Avda. Los Castros s/n, Santander, 39005, Cantabria

    Elisa Baraibar-Diez

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  1. Elisa Baraibar-Diez
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  2. María D Odriozola
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  3. José Luis Fernández Sánchez
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Correspondence to Elisa Baraibar-Diez.

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Baraibar-Diez, E., Odriozola, M. & Sánchez, J. Transparency through European corporate governance codes. Int J Discl Gov 13, 244–261 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/jdg.2015.17

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