Corporate Governance Characteristics and Organisational Performance in Kenya’s Export Floriculture Companies: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study

Corporate governance is expected to support accountability and organisational coordination, but the strength of its association with performance may vary across settings and measurement approaches. This exploratory cross-sectional study examined the relationships between leadership structure, internal control strategy, governance norms and perceived organisational performance among export floricultural companies in Kenya. Twenty companies were purposively selected for this study; 16 returned usable questionnaires, an 80% response rate. Because of item-level missingness, analytic sample sizes varied; the principal correlation and multiple-regression analyses used 14 observations. Pearson correlations between perceived performance and leadership structure (r = −.058, p = .844), internal control strategy (r = .102, p = .728) and governance norms (r = .198, p = .498) were not statistically significant. The joint regression model was also not significant, F(3, 10) = 0.350, p = .790, R² = .095, adjusted R² = −.177. Internal control strategy and governance norms were strongly correlated (r = .880, p < .001), raising a concern about construct overlap and coefficient stability. These findings do not establish that governance is unimportant; rather, the small purposive sample provides limited precision and generalisability. The study offers preliminary sector-specific evidence and identifies priorities for larger studies using multiple informants, validated measures and independently verified performance indicators.