Political Connection, Board Characteristics and Environmental Disclosure in Nigeria

Abstract

The poor environmental performance and by extension low level of environmental disclosure evident in the annual reports of quoted Nigerian companies have aroused stakeholders concern about the condition of the environment. The main objective of this study is to x-ray the relationship between political connection, board characteristics and environmental disclosure. The quantitative approach will be adopted using data from the annual reports of the sampled companies. The theoretical framework is built on the legitimacy theory with support from the agency and managerial power theory. It is envisaged that the study will engage corporate organizations to adequately provide for environmental information in their internal policies. The study will facilitate environmental cost reporting responsiveness and disclosure to investors and environmental regulatory bodies.

Corporate Board Characteristics and Environmental Disclosure Quantity: A Comparative Analysis of Traditional and Integrated Reporting Evidence

“…Therefore, we, reject H5. The results contradict the earlier finding of Osazuwa et al (2016) in Nigeria and (Ntim & Osei, 2011) from South Africa. Table 11 shows coefficients and significance of environmental committee in all the models for South Africa and Nigeria.…”

“…However, the results also indicate that both board size and Audit firm size (Big4) in both countries M7 have a positive and statistically significant relation (p=0.0034, p=0.0315) and (p=0.0284, p=0.0428) respectively.Based on the evidence, board size and firm audit size associate more to the extent of environmental disclosure among listed companies in South Africa and less in Nigeria. The results agree with the findings of (Akbas, 2016;Haniffa & Cooke, 2005;Jizi et al, 2013;Ntim & Osei, 2011;Osazuwa et al, 2016) that board size influences the extent of environmental disclosure. The finding agrees with agency theory (John & Senbet, 1998) that having a large board comprising a diversity of expertise (Sun, Salama, Hussainey, & Habbash, 2010) encourages more disclosure.…”

“…The study focused only on mining companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange and employed content analysis of the annual reports and documents a significant positive association between the board size and the extent of environmental disclosure. Osazuwa et al, (2016) answer the CDP questionnaire as well as its carbon disclosure quality. Bridging the gap in knowledge about the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the banking sector of US, Jizi et al, (2013) found a significant positive association between board size and CRS.…”

Trend and relationship between environmental accounting disclosure and environmental performance for mining companies listed in China

“…Equally, the debt to equity ratio (Kılıç and Kuzey 2018 ) and the profitability of the company (Brooks and Oikonomou 2018 ) influence the company in disclosing environmental accounting information to the stakeholders. Board characteristics cannot be underscored when it comes to internal factors that influence environmental accounting information disclosure (Osazuwa et al 2016 ; Passetti et al 2018 ). Board characteristics that are identified as determinants of environmental information disclosure in the mining companies are the size of the board (Vogt et al 2017 ; Osazuwa et al 2016 ; García‐Sánchez and Martínez‐Ferrero 2018 ), the proportion of independent directors (García‐Sánchez and Martínez‐Ferrero 2018 ; Cucari et al 2018 ), establishment of professional committees (Osazuwa et al 2016 ), the female representation of the board (Elmagrhi et al 2019 ) CEO duality (Cucari et al 2018 ), and age range of board members (Fernandes et al 2019 ).…”

Sustainability Reporting and Firms’ Economic Performance: Evidence from Asia and Africa

“…By analysing the size of the board of directors, for instance, several studies found a positive influence of its large size on the level of environmental disclosure (Siregar and Bachtiar 2010;Htay et al 2012;Rao et al 2012;Andrikopoulos and Kriklani 2013;Raman and Bukair 2013;Jizi et al 2014;Shamil et al 2014;Khlif et al 2015;Osazuwa et al 2016;Trireksani and Djajadikerta 2016). By analysing the board composition, other studies find that the firms' engagement in sustainability reporting, as well as the quantity and quality of disclosed information, is positively influenced by the presence of independent directors and of a dual leadership structure (Chau and Gray 2010;Zhang 2012;Jizi et al 2014;Shamil et al 2014;Liao et al 2015;Eberhardt-Toth 2017).…”