You Can Trust Your Car to the Man Who Wears the Star: A Look at Discretionary Disclosure by Texaco

The accounting literature has focused upon cross-sectional analyses of mandated disclosures. This study instead assesses discretionary disclosure over a long period of time. Rather than select a single element of disclosure for many companies, this study attempts to summarize and appreciate the entirety of discretionary disclosure for a single company. In 2001, the Texaco Corporation was merged with Chevron, ending a 98-year history as a reporting entity. A review of their discretionary disclosures over the years demonstrates both the strategic and the reflective nature of corporate communications in its correlations to several variables that are also tracked over the history of this company.