CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, FIRM CHARACTERISTICS AND FORWARD LOOKING ACCOUNTING INFORMATION DISCLOSURE IN QUOTED MANUFACTURING COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper examined the effect of corporate governance, firm characteristics on forward looking accounting information disclosure in quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The corporate governance is proxied by gender diversity, audit committee size, audit committee meeting frequency and risk management committees. Firm characteristics is proxied by leverage, firm size, audit firm type, and profitability; while forward looking accounting information is proxied by 35 keywords of forward looking accounting information disclosure. Content analyses of the narrative part of annual report of sampled companies were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. An ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study. A purposive sampling approach was used to select the sample. Data were obtained from ten (10) years’ (2011-2020) annual reports and accounts of sampled manufacturing firms in Nigeria. Multiple regression to test the hypothesis at a significance level of 5%. The findings showed that corporate governance and firm characteristics jointly and positively significantly affected the forward looking disclosure of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria (p-value =0.0000; <0.05). The findings also showed that audit committee meeting’s frequency and audit firm size is negatively significant while gender diversity, audit committee size, risk management committee and firm size is positively significant on the disclosure forward looking information. The Adjusted R-Square of 0.33 showed that 67% is outside forward looking accounting information disclosure. The study recommends that the management should pay attention to disclosure of forward looking information as current level is below the disclosure level obtainable in other developing nation