Board Structure as Determinant of Corporate Governance Disclosure Practices and Compliance: The Moderating Influence of CEO Power

Abstract

Today’s dynamic business environment, has seen corporate transparency, financial accountability, and compliance with disclosure requirements as the basis for comprehensive company governance mechanism. The Board of a company performs a central role in ensuring good corporate governance practice. To this end, this study examines board structure as determinant of corporate governance disclosure practices of listed companies in Nigeria. The study adopted the cross-sectional and longitudinal research designs and used content analysis of corporate financial statements and a modified corporate governance disclosure checklist based on NCCG (2018) standard to examine the level of disclosures by sampled industrial goods firms for the period 2016 to 2020. Findings of the study reveal that board independence is a major determinant of corporate governance disclosure. The study also reveals that CEO power and ethnic minority diversity have positive but not significant association with corporate governance disclosure, and that CEO power weakens the positive influence of board independence on corporate governance disclosures. The study concludes that board structure is a determinant of the corporate governance disclosure practices of listed industrial goods companies in Nigeria and recommends amongst others the need to review CAMA (2020) and NCCG (2018) to strengthen board composition and independence.