Online transparency and corporate governance in Spanish governmental agencies
| Pages | 653-675 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-03-2018-0102 |
| Published date | 12 August 2019 |
| Date | 12 August 2019 |
| Author | Vicente Pina,Lourdes Torres |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Online transparency and
corporate governance in Spanish
governmental agencies
Vicente Pina and Lourdes Torres
Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –Online transparency has become a tool to increase legitimacy and trust in governments. The
purpose of this paper is to study the online transparency of Spanish Central Government agencies and
analyze whether their corporate governance (CG) structures influence their online transparency.
Design/methodology/approach –The information used for building an online transparency index and about
the board of directors has been collected from the websites of the 168 agencies and from their statutes and activity
reports. Ordinary least squares analysis is used. Based on a previous literature review and the requirements of the
EU Directive and Spanish legislation, 108 items included in the websites have been analyzed.
Findings –The average information displayed through the website agencies is significantly less than the
information considered as relevant in previous literature and in the Spanish legislation. The highest values
are presented by the technical dimensions and the lowest by the organizational/political dimension. The
presence of independent directors and women on the boards of directors are revealed as the most important
explanatory factors of online transparency.
Practical implications –Practical implications to improve online transparency are related to the
organizational/political dimension –including the positions and CVs of members of governing bodies, minutes, etc.
and to the presence of independent directors and, to a lesser extent, of women, on the board of directors.
Originality/value –The contribution of this paper is the identification of some online transparency
determinants in public entities under the same general legal framework. This is the first paper that analyzes
the relationship between online transparency and CG in public agencies.
Keywords Corporate governance, Independent directors and gender, Online transparency,
Spanish public agencies
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Definitions of transparency in the public sector focus on the disclosure and availability of
information useful to stakeholders formonitoring and decision making. Various authors have
proposed different but consistent definitions of transparency in the public sector. Wong and
Welch (2004) define the concept of transparency as the extent to which public organizations
reveal information about their operations, procedures and decision-making processes.
Armstrong (2005) describes transparency as free public access to timely and reliable
information on decisions and performance in the public sector. For Hood and Heald (2006),
transparency should primarily be viewed as a tool for external stakeholders to monitor the
internal workings of an organization, prevent corruption and ensure due process. The most
outstanding features of transparency, its determinants and environmental and institutional
factors that could contribute to explaining the speed and scope with which transparency
initiatives are implemented in the public sector have been studied in the last decade
(Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2013). Cucciniello et al. (2017) identified more than 3,300 studies that
refer to transparency in the public sector.
Almost all of these studies have assessed the level of availability of information by analyzing
the information disclosed through the internet. Therefore, in practice, the references to
transparency should be read as references to online transparency. Based on those definitions, Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 4, 2019
pp. 653-675
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-03-2018-0102
Received 20 March 2018
Revised 16 September 2018
Accepted 14 January 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
This paper has been elaborated with the financial support of the Spanish Central Government project
ECO2015-66240-P and the Government of Aragon project S56-17R FEDER Funds.
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and corporate
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academic researchers group the information disclosed in different ways. For instance, Pina et al.
(2007) measure website displays based on four dimensions: transparency, interactivity, usability
and maturity. Piotrowski and Bertelli (2010) identify three dimensions: openness and online
availability, minutes, and upcoming meetings; document request processing; and proactive
dissemination of documents. Cucciniello et al. (2015) distinguish four dimensions: institutional,
political, financial and service-delivery transparency. Meijer et al. (2015) distinguish between
political and administrative dimensions of transparency. Douglas and Meijer (2016) group
transparency items using three dimensions: operational capacity, public value proposition and
authorizing environment. Cucciniello et al. (2017) summarize the items of transparency in two
groups: by object (administrative, political and budgetary) and by activity (decision-making,
policyandpolicyoutcome).
The enactment of access to information laws in most EU countries shows a growing
interest in political institutions and public administrations about the enhancement of online
transparency in the public sector as a tool for engaging citizens in public affairs and
improving citizen trust in government. Some of the transparency requirements of the EU
Directive 2014/95[1], which aims at increasing the transparency of large EU companies by
supplementing the information disclosed with non-financial information about their policies,
the outcomes of their policies, key performance indicators and risks, were included in the
Spanish Act 19/2013 on transparency, access to public sector information and good
governance. This Act requires all public entities, through their websites, to adopt pro-active
policies for thedisclosure of non-financialinformation about their institutional, organizational
and planning features, together with their financial statements and annual budgets. The
requirements concerning risks are expected to supplement the information disclosed by
independent public sector entities (such as agencies) in the near future.
Together with the studies on online transparency, it is also interesting to highlight the
growth of research about the determinants of online transparency, i.e., why transparency
grows undersome conditionsbut not under othersand why some entitiesare more transparent
than others, even under the same legal transparency requirements framework. Research on the
determinants of online transparency initially focused on different characteristics of entities,
such as the size (Depoers, 2000). Recent research suggests that other factors may determine an
entity disclosure policy. This research is increasingly focusing its attention on the links
between governance mechanisms and online transparency (Ho and Taylor, 2013; Torchia and
Calabrò, 2016; Agyei-Mensah, 2016). A major reason for the interest about the analysis of
transparency and corporate governance (CG) codes has been the demand for greater
transparency, managerial accountability and responsibility, after a number of accounting
scandals (Borisova et al., 2012). The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy
(CIPFA) concluded that the issues raised in the Cadbury Report on governance in corporations
were also relevant to public sector organizations and urged them to adopt the Cadbury
principles which have influenced a number of recommendations from the UK accounting
bodies (CIMA, ICAEW, ICAS, CIPFA) while discussion papers and codes of conduct have been
issued relating to public service activities (Hodges et al., 1996). Furthermore, CG mechanisms
are becoming very popular in the public sector, as a result of the financial crisis and recent
scandals affecting public sector management (Christopher, 2010).
The objective of this paper is to study the online transparencyo fSpanish Central Government
agencies and analyze whether their CG structures are determinants of their online transparency.
The contribution of this paper to the existing literature is the identification of online transparency
determinants in public entities under the same legal framework. This is the first paper that
analyzes the relationship between online transparency and the features of CG in public agencies.
There is an extensive literature on public agencies and the delegation of authority to such
bodies across different countries (Christensen and Lægreid, 2006; Verhoest et al., 2012). For Bach
et al. (2012), in many countries, “agency”is used as a generic term for public organizations
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