Intellectual Capital Disclosure and Corporate Governance Structure: Evidence in Malaysia

Abstract

The objectives of this paper are to investigate the extent of the intellectual capital disclosure and the relationship between intellectual capital disclosure and corporate governance variables in Malaysian public listed companies. The independent variables tested in this study comprise various forms of corporate governance structure: (1) board composition, (2) role duality, (3) size of audit committee and (4) frequency of audit committee meetings. A sample of 150 companies listed in Bursa Malaysia was selected consisting of five industries which are Information Technology, Consumer Product, Industrial Product, Trading/Services and Finance. The descriptive statistics, content analysis and linear regression model were performed to analyze the data. Out of 4 variables tested, only the frequency of audit committee meeting has significant positive relationship in influencing the level of intellectual capital disclosure in Malaysia. The result also found 72.6 percent of the selected companies disclosed intellectual capital in their annual reports. However the extent of the intellectual capital disclosure among Malaysian companies is still relatively low about 3.45 percent. This result revealed that most of Malaysian companies are aware about the intellectual capital disclosure, however, they are not aware on how to measure, report and disclose this information in their annual report. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]