Corporate Governance, Earnings Management and Financial Performance: A Case of Nigerian Manufacturing Firms
Shehu Usman Hassan, Abubakar Ahmed
Abstract
Accountants and financial economists have for long identified that corporate governance affects both financial performance and the opportunistic behaviour of managers. Studies on the influence of corporate governance mechanisms on firm performance often overlook the possibility that reported earnings can be misrepresented by managers in order to achieve a variety of objectives. This paper examines the relationship between corporate governance on corporate financial performance when performance is stripped of the discretionery component of accruals. Secondary data were extracted from annual reports of the sample firms for the period between 2008 to 2010 and univariate OLS multiple regression was used as a tool for data analysis. The study documents that corporate governance significantly impact on both the adjusted and unadjusted firm performance in different magnitudes and directions. Specifically, it is emperically established that board composition is inversely related with true performance while a positive interraction emerges between executive compensation and firm performance regardless of the performance specification.
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