Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) attributes on intellectual capital disclosures (ICDs) in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) listed firms’ annual reports. By using content analysis and the purposive sampling and by applying the ordinary least-square regressions method it was found that there is a significant positive association between three attributes of board of directors (BOD) (i. e.
board size, board frequency of meeting, and board financial expertise) and the level of ICDs. Also, the empirical evidence derived from the regression models indicate that there is a significant positive association between two attributes of audit committee (AC) (i. e.
AC independence and AC meetings) and the level of ICDs.
The results of this study are undoubted of great concern to regulatory bodies in setting guidelines and procedures to encourage the disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) in annual reports. Also, the results of this study will aid policymakers in understating the current ICDs practices to set a better rules and regulations to promote its transparency and disclosure to better aid the users of the GCC listed firms’ annual reports.
This study's contribution to the literature is as follows: it examines the relationship between CG characteristics (i. e. board characteristics and AC characteristics) and the ICDs for six years (2014-2019) with 1122 observations and provides new evidence on the importance of the CG characteristics and their impact on the firm’s ICDs in emerging stock markets.
Keywords : Intellectual Capital Disclosure, Human Capital, Relational, Capital, Structural Capital, Content Analysis, Annual Reports, Corporate Governance, GCC