The effects of ownership structure on cCorporate Environmental Responsibility disclosure among public-listed companies in Malaysia

Currently, there is a growth in demands by stakeholders for companies to demonstrate greater transparency on environmental disclosure. The findings revealed from research conducted on corporate accounting indicated that the relationship of the environmental factors influences the disclosures practices. This paper examines the effect of ownership structure characteristics namely managerial ownership, ownership concentration, government ownership and foreign ownership on the extent of Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER) disclosure in the annual reports among public-listed companies (PLCs) in Malaysia. For the purpose of this study, 254 company annual reports for the year 2010 were analyzed. The multiple regressions analysis is utilized in this study in order to achieve the research objectives. The conduct of testing is controlled by company size and industry profile. The findings show that ownership concentration and government ownership influenced the level of CER disclosure. Moreover, the company size as control variable has positive significant impact on the CER disclosure. Nevertheless, the managerial ownership and foreign ownership do not appear to have a significant impact on the extent of CER disclosure. The research shows that the level of CER disclosure is different across sectors and is relatively low. Finally, this study can clearly integrate the relationship between ownership structure mechanisms and CER disclosure and it can assist the relevant authorities in Malaysia to look further the policies on environmental disclosure among public-listed companies in Malaysia