DENIS CORMIER,WALTER AERTS, MARIE-JOSÉE LEDOUX AND MICHEL MAGNAN Web-Based Disclosure About Value Creation Processes: A Monitoring Perspective Adopting a monitoring perspective, this study aims to explain how and why firms provide web-based disclosure about their value creation and its underlying processes. We rely on the balanced scoreboard approach to measure disclosure. Our results suggest that costs incurred by capital markets’ participants as well as monitoring by the board and the media drive disclosure. Moreover, we argue and document that a firm’s disclosure is actually a part of its governance configuration and influences some board processes. Key words: Corporate disclosure; Corporate governance; Monitoring; Voluntary disclosure; Web reporting. This paper addresses two complementary research questions. First, to what extent do monitoring considerations drive a firm’s web-based disclosure about value creation processes? For that purpose, monitoring refers to financial market monitoring, gov- ernance monitoring and media monitoring. Second, how do disclosure, board effec- tiveness and media coverage interact with one another? In that context, we argue that disclosure represents a facet of a firm’s governance configuration. Corporate managers view strategy formulation and implementation in a multi- dimensional way, focusing on different performance or value creation metrics (e.g., Simons, 2000).Therefore, effective monitoring of a firm’s management decisions and actions implies that boards of directors, financial markets participants and the media get access to a comprehensive information set that reflects such underlying value creation initiatives and actions. In that regard, we argue that a firm’s disclosure complements its governance and monitoring mechanisms. The mapping between non-financial measures and value creation, as well as the importance of these mea- sures, has been widely recognized by financial analysts, especially in industries where there are sizable intangibles assets (e.g., Dempsey et al., 1997; Healy et al., 1999). Denis Cormier (cormier.denis@uqam.ca) is a Professor in the School of Management, University of Quebec at Montreal (ESG UQÃM); Walter Aerts a Professor in the Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Antwerp; Marie-Josée Ledoux a Professor in the School of Management, Uni- versity of Quebec at Montreal; and Michel Magnan a Professor in the Department of Accountancy, Concordia University. We acknowledge financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Fonds Québecois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), l’Autorité des marchés financiers (Québec), PriceWaterhouseCoopers and KPMG. ABACUS, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2010 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6281.2010.00321.x 320 © 2010 The Authors Abacus © 2010 Accounting Foundation, The University of Sydney