This study investigates the influence of corporate governance mechanisms towards voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosure among Public Listed Companies (PLCs) in Malaysia. Unlike other previous studies that examined the total voluntary disclosures, this study focus on the small part of total voluntary disclosure which is strategic and forward looking information. The main objectives of this study is to identify which corporate governance mechanisms (size of audit committee, managerial ownership, independent director, and director’s remuneration) that are likely to motivate public listed companies to provides strategic and forward looking information disclosures voluntarily. Furthermore, the study also intended to examine the level of voluntary disclosure of strategic and forward looking information in annual reports among Malaysian publicly listed companies. Annual reports for the year ended 31st December 2015 of 230 public listed companies on main market of Bursa Malaysia are accessed and analyzed. The level of voluntary strategic and forward looking information of companies are measured by using a checklist of 36 items which is adopted from prior studies. For each item a score is awarded based on the disclosure made by the companies in annual report. The results showed that the level of voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosure among public listed companies is moderate as expected. Size of audit committee is positively and significantly influence the level of voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosures. Managerial ownership has an inverse relationship with the level of voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosure. While the other variables such as the independent director and director’s remuneration are not associated with the level of voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosures. The findings in the study indicated that audit committee size can play an important role in enhancing the level of voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosures. In addition, the management of the company has to re-look at the policy on managerial ownership since it has negative relationship which suggested that the higher the level of managerial ownership the lower will be the level of voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosures. Furthermore, the results from this study can assist regulators and policy-makers to understand the influence of corporate governance mechanisms towards voluntary strategic and forward looking information disclosures. Several limitations are raised in this study that can subject for future research.
