Men of steel: Voluntary accounting information disclosure in the first third of the twentieth century at U.S. Steel Corporation

Before the emergence of accounting regulation and broadly-based equity ownership in the US, corporations had a relatively free hand over financial information disclosure. Why information was disseminated was therefore a purer window into corporate strategy. This paper considers the case of U.S. Steel Corporation, a dominant industrial company for the good part of the 20th century in the world's largest economy. Two explanations, stewardship and legitimacy theory are offered as rationales for the company's relatively high level of voluntary disclosure. The results suggest that the stewardship model is the one most likely to explain the variation in the historical pattern of disclosure.