Performance disclosure on the web: an exploration of the impact of managers’ perceptions of stakeholder concerns

Using an exploratory research perspective, we examine how multinational firms’executives’ motivations map into corporate website performance disclosure. Our focus is onmanagements’ beliefs about the relevance of financial, social and environmental performancedisclosures and how these beliefs relate to the firm’s website disclosure practices. For 56companies, we use managers’ perceptions along with data captured from websites. Employingfactor and regression analysis, we find that executives’ perceptions of stakeholders’ importanceaffect their firms’ web-based disclosure practices and foci. Additionally, strategic focus, media,size of organization, profitability, leverage and analyst following are found influential in explainingtypes of performance disclosures made.