Factors Influencing the Extent of Compliance with Mandatory Corporate Disclosure Requirements by Manufacturing Companies Listed at Amman Stock Exchange

This study aimed at investigating empirically the extent of mandatory compliance with International Accounting Standards (IASs) by manufacturing companies listed at Amman Stock Exchange in 2006. It also aimed at explaining the relationship between some of corporate-specific characteristics (size, age, leverage and profitability) and some of corporate governance attributes (audit committee independence, type of audit firm and ownership structure/concentration) on the level of the compliance. An index of compliance was devised to quantify the level of the compliance. This was applied to financial statement of 50 manufacturing companies listed at Amman Stock Exchange for the year 2006. Multiple regression analysis was used to explore the relationship between the level of compliance and the particular attributes of these companies. The average level of the compliance for all companies was 76.6% of the items in the index, and no company within the examined time was fully complied with all requirements. This study also reveals that there is a significant positive relationship between the size, leverage, profitability, ownership structure and type of audit firm and the level of mandatory compliance with IASs, while results did not support any relationship between the age of the company and the independent of audit committee with the extent of the compliance.