Family Control, Board of Directors' Independence and Extent of Voluntary Disclosure in the Annual Reports: Case of Tunisian Companies

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the indirect effect of internal governance mechanisms on the extent of voluntary disclosure. More specifically, it is to analyze the mediating effect of the board of directors' independence on the impact of family control regarding the extent of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports. This research focuses on Panel data of Tunisian companies of the non-financial sector listed on the stock exchange (observed in the years 2003-2008) and data from a questionnaire sent to 40 Tunisian financial analysts and portfolio managers. From the obtained results, we find that the extent of voluntary disclosure increased during the period following the promulgation of the Law on the strengthening of the security of financial relations compared to the period prior to the enactment of this Law. In addition, the analyzes following the method of Barron and Kenny (1986) show the existence of a partial mediation effect of the board's independence on the impact of family control regarding the extent of voluntary disclosure. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]