IMPACT OF CORPORATE CHARACTERISTICS ON VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE: A MANAGERIAL INSIGHT

Managers of the 21st century use corporate voluntary disclosure to retain existing investors and entice potential investors in order to ensure sustainability in corporate performance. It is a big challenge for the emerging economy to identify the corporate characteristics that significantly influence corporate voluntary reporting, which further leads the organization to achieve sustainability in corporate performance. This study aims to investigate the most important corporate characteristics that affect voluntary disclosure in an emerging economy, Bangladesh. Multiple regression is used to find a causal relationship between the selected corporate characteristics and corporate voluntary disclosure in the emerging economy. It is found that the size of the firm, the profitability of the firm, and the director shareholding significantly influence corporate voluntary reporting, while the listing history does not have any impact voluntary disclosure in Bangladesh. In line with the concepts of agency theory and stakeholder's theory, this result implies that large and profitable firms with more directors' shareholding induce the business entity to disclose more information than small and less profitable organizations.