Can female director on board curb earnings smoothening practices in Nigerian listed non-financial firms?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33003/fujafr-2025.v3i4.233.264-279Keywords:
Corporate governance, Earnings management, Gender diversity, Female director, Real earnings management, NigeriaAbstract
Purpose: The corporate world has shown tremendous compliance with a corporate governance code of gender sensitivity in developed countries. In the emerging markets of Africa, specifically Nigeria, companies are under tremendous pressure to ensure flexibility in the management of their business board composition. Therefore, the purpose is to provide empirical insights on female board members mitigating earnings management, which plays a critical role in shareholder confidence and corporate firm performance.
Methodology: Covering a period from 2015 to 2024, of the publicly listed 111, and after filtering, 76 non-financial firms were used. This study adopted a panel dataset using fixed and random effects regression analysis to assess the relationship between female inclusion on board and earnings management.
Results and conclusion: Findings reveal that women on board are negatively and statistically significantly associated with real earnings management as a result of a lack of compliance with the 30 per cent women representation on boards. This study is one of the first to provide thorough empirical support for the idea that female on the board composition mitigates earnings management practice in emerging markets and adopted all listed non-financial firms.
Implication of findings: Based on the conclusion, the study recommends that policymakers, company executives, and researchers increase the number of females on board to reflect the corporate governance code of 30 per cent for effectiveness and transparency on financial reporting quality.
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