Dissertation
General counsel prominence & historical environmental and social (ES) disclosure
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Sep 2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00010695
Abstract
This study investigates the role of the general counsel (GC) in voluntary historical environmental and social (ES) disclosure decisions. Prior literature has focused exclusively on the GC's role in forward-looking disclosures, specifically management earnings forecasts, finding that GCs use such disclosures to reduce the risk of being sued for failing to provide material information to investors. Historical ES disclosures carry greater risk of being sued for misrepresentations relative to their forward-looking counterpart due to the lack of statutory safe harbor protection and the ease of verifiability. As ES disclosure remains voluntary under the current regime, I use the ES setting to examine the GC's role with respect to historical disclosures. Multivariate levels and changes regression analyses indicate a negative association between GC elevation to senior management and historical social disclosures. Additionally, I find that this negative association is more pronounced among firms operating in plaintiff-friendly legal environments and litigious industries. My empirical findings are robust to alternative measures of GC prominence. Overall, the associations I document align with the notion that GCs reduce the quantity of historical social disclosures to mitigate the risk of lawsuits alleging materially misleading misrepresentations.
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Details
- Title
- General counsel prominence & historical environmental and social (ES) disclosure
- Creators
- Jun Yang Tan
- Contributors
- Barbara M. Grein (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- vii, 77 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Accounting; Bennett S. LeBow College of Business; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991021902013304721