Do board interlocks motivate voluntary disclosure? Evidence from Taiwan

Conference calls have become a widely used medium for voluntary corporate disclosure, especially among firms associated with greater information asymmetry, intangible assets, and external competition. These features are common in high-tech sectors, which dominate the Taiwanese economy and render it a useful research setting for investigating whether board interlock, as a social network, affects corporate decisions to hold conference calls. We show that firms connected to conference-call-making firms through interlocked directors are more likely to hold conference calls and the frequency of holding conference calls increases with interlocking directors’ relevant experience. Moreover, such evidence is more pronounced if the connections are held through independent directors and among firms with greater information asymmetry. These results support the argument that the spread of corporate practices is positively associated with board interlock networks. Our findings have implications for the choice of board of director members, and can be generalized to other emerging economies characterized by weaker corporate information environments.