Board Structure and Performance Outcomes: Evidence from Listed Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria

The dynamism of today’s business environment has placed an increasing significance on corporate governance in firms around the globe. Owning to inconclusive results of prior studies on the relationship between board structure and financial performance in the context of Nigeria listed manufacturing firms, It is this gap that this study aimed to achieve by investigating the effect of board structure on financial performance in listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The study adopted an ex-post facto research design using panel data from the annual financial reports of 6 listed manufacturing firms over a period of 6 years. Eviews version 12 was utilized to analyze the data collected for descriptive statistics and Panel least square regression analysis was employed to test hypotheses for this study. The findings from the analysis revealed a coefficient and P-value of 0.008 and 0.53 respectively (Board size) and -0.086 and 0.0008 (board gender diversity) based on the fixed effect model and significance level of 5% (0.05). Hence, it indicates that the impact of board size on financial performance (ROA) is direct, insignificant while the impact of board gender diversity on financial performance (ROA) is negative, significant. It is, therefore, recommended that future researches should consider the impact of other controlling factor that could influence the relationship between board structure and financial performance, for the possibility of enhancing corporate performance.