Author
Abstract
Most listed firms in Nigeria constitute a board with people from various backgrounds. This may be done to give friendly impression and ensure balanced decision making process. Also this may be a ground for unending debate /argument. However the extent this impact on the performance of firms has not been fully established. This study examined the effect of board diversity on financial performance of listed firms in Nigeria. Using Ex-post facto research design with content analysis approach to specific variables, the study employed multiple regression analysis in analyzing data collated from the financial statement selected firms in the Nigerian stock exchange between 2014 and 2018. Findings revealed that gender diversity has no significant effect on leverage ratio of the listed firms while educational diversity and nationality diversity both have no significant effect on leverage ratio of the listed firms in Nigeria. This will not only give credence to the contemporary propagation of gender equality but having more female members who are resourceful in risk evaluation will serve as a check to the possibility of bankruptcy when firms expose themselves to high leverage ratio. Also, the listed firms should admit board members that are resourceful as a result of educational diversity. This will help the board to have the required human resources to evaluate the best possible financing option vis a vis cost of capital and any agency issues that may arise from such investment decision. The board members with diverse nationality are resourceful and vast in international business culture and economic experiences. This will help the board members navigate the contemporary economic dynamisms as a result of business globalization which poses a threat to the survival of businesses on daily basis. The policy implication of this study is that in formulating policy regarding board composition, gender, nationality and expertise/education should be ignore. Thus it is recommended that listed firms Nigeria should consider highly the need to admit more female board members so as to balance up the ratio of gender diversity
Suggested Citation
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:ijafic:0049. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Daniel Akanbi (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.icanig.org/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.